MASTIC BEACH, N.Y. — It was a 90-minute nightmare.
Alfred and Geri Esposito of Mastic Beach were told Saturday morning that their son Freddy and another passenger had been killed in a collision with a tractor-trailer on a Pennsylvania highway.
It turns out Freddy wasn’t dead. He was asleep on a couch in an apartment he rents with his brother. The dead man was one of his former fraternity brothers — a revelation that both relieved and upset the Espositos.
“Ninety minutes of my life I’ll never get back,’’ Geri Esposito said yesterday. “My husband, who is a very strong man, was reduced to a puddle.’’
The mix-up began when Pennsylvania troopers found Freddy Esposito’s driver’s license in the hands of one of the men killed in the wreck — 18-year-old Paul Richards of Santa Cruz, Calif.
Geri Esposito said her son and Richards may have shared a fraternity house as students at Stony Brook University. She suspects Freddy, 26, may have lost his ID and never realized it. Freddy Esposito was not available to comment; his mother said he is upset at the deaths of his friends.
After police left the Esposito home, calls were made to relatives, and someone was sent to tell Freddy’s grandmother.
“It didn’t make sense to me, but I was numb,’’ Geri Esposito said of the report that her son had been driving. “Freddy doesn’t drive anywhere.’’
