Carmen Colon felt a sense of dread when her stepson did not respond to her texts.
Several days earlier, on April 2, a man in a stolen 2025 Honda CRV had been killed when the car smashed into a building and caught fire in the Inwood section of Manhattan. Two officers who were chasing the car when it crashed were suspended amid a police investigation into their actions.
The driver, burned beyond recognition, was not identified in the immediate aftermath.
The lack of replies to her texts and rumors that she had begun to hear made Ms. Colon, who lives north of New York City in Orange County, N.Y., fear that the driver was her stepson, Francisco Andres Guzman Parra, 31.
On April 4, Ms. Colon, 53, and Mr. Guzman Parra’s oldest sister, Francis, rushed to the precincts connected to the crash: the 50th, in the Bronx, where the two officers worked, and the 34th, in Upper Manhattan, where the crash occurred.
“‘I want to know if that’s my stepson,’” she said she told officers.
They got no answer from the precincts. Early the next day, Ms. Colon called the New York City medical examiner’s office to say that Mr. Guzman Parra’s dental records could be found at a free clinic in Harlem where he had been treated for a toothache.
The next day was Sunday, April 6, She went to church and prayed and then, on Wednesday afternoon, the medical examiner’s office confirmed her fears: Her stepson was the dead driver. Ms. Colon called Mr. Guzman Parra’s mother in the Dominican Republic to tell her.
“It was horrible,” Ms. Colon said. “She was screaming at the top of her lungs.”
It was a violent end for Mr. Guzman Parra, a father of two teenage girls. He had come from the Dominican Republic as a young boy and had remained undocumented, dropping out of school around the eighth grade and struggling to find steady work beyond occasional construction and painting gigs.
Now, Ms. Colon and Mr. Guzman Parra’s seven brothers and sisters are preparing to bury him in New York, where he had always felt most at home.
The police are examining whether the officers left the scene without reporting the crash, according to a senior law enforcement official. Patrick Hendry, the president of the union that represents the officers, said they had lost sight of the car and did not know it had crashed.
But Mr. Guzman Parra’s relatives are furious that the officers left the scene, and they have been agonizing over what Mr. Guzman Parra’s final moments may have been like.
Did he die on impact? Did the flames slowly take over the Honda as he sat unconscious at the wheel? Was he left alone to die?
“I don’t care if he stole 10,000 cars,” Ms. Colon said. “He shouldn’t have been treated like that. You see a dog hurt in the street, you try to help him.”
The medical examiner’s office said on Thursday that Mr. Guzman Parra had died from blunt impact injuries to the head and torso and “thermal injuries.” His death was ruled an accident. The Police Department has said the crash is being scrutinized by its force investigation unit and the state attorney general’s office. Both are responsible for investigating deaths involving the police.
The police said the officers were patrolling their Bronx precinct before the chase began, but they have not provided details about why they were pursuing the Honda south on the Henry Hudson Parkway when it exited onto Dyckman Street in Inwood.
Ms. Colon said she had spoken to a detective in the department’s accident reconstruction unit who told her that her stepson had driven down the Dyckman Street exit ramp at 100 miles per hour. Mr. Guzman Parra was apparently going too fast to make the turn onto Dyckman Street and crashed into the building, Ms. Colon said the detective had told her.
Firefighters received a 911 call about a car on fire on Dyckman Street just before 5 a.m. Wednesday, according to the Fire Department. When they got to the scene, they found the Honda CRV engulfed in flames. The police said that they responded to a 911 call a minute later. Emergency medical workers pronounced the man dead at the scene, the police said.
Mr. Hendry said the officers had been patrolling an area “plagued with auto crime” when they saw a car they believed had been stolen. He said video evidence “shows that the vehicle was not on fire when the officers were in the vicinity.”
“The officers were not able to see the vehicle’s position as they exited the highway” onto Dyckman Street, Mr. Hendry said in a statement. “This case remains under investigation and that investigation must continue without any rush to judgment.”
Ms. Colon said Mr. Guzman Parra had a minor arrest record, including for fare evasion, and often asked his family for money. He had not spent time in prison, she said.
Ms. Colon said she did not know if he had been stealing cars.
“He wasn’t praying on the street either,” Ms. Colon said. “I always told him: ‘When you’re ready to get your life straight, let me know. I will open up the doors and help you whatever way I can.’”
He would reply that he would try, she said. He never carried identification and was terrified of being deported, she added.
Mr. Guzman Parra’s sisters worried that he had been picked up by immigration officials when no one had heard from him since April 1, when he left his girlfriend’s house in Queens in the evening to meet a friend in the Bronx.
For days, he did not respond to messages. Then, Ms. Colon said, his sisters heard about the Dyckman Street crash and called to say they feared the driver might be him. Ms. Colon began texting Mr. Guzman Parra, saying everyone was worried.
The crash occurred about three months after Jessica S. Tisch, the police commissioner, announced that officers would no longer engage in high-speed chases of drivers who broke traffic laws or committed other low-level offenses. The change was made to address the number of crashes that have led to serious injuries and deaths in the most densely populated major city in the United States.
Mr. Hendry said the policy announced by the commissioner “authorizes police officers to initiate a pursuit” under circumstances like those involving the stolen car Mr. Guzman Parra was in.
On Thursday, Francis Guzman went to Dyckman Street with her daughter to place balloons at a memorial that was being set up for her brother. She had stopped at the site the day before, sitting in her car for several hours and thinking about his last minutes.
“I have so many questions,” she said. “I have a right to know why. I want answers for the death of my brother.”
