The upstate New York blizzard death toll hit 32 on Tuesday — as officials desperately called up more military police and troopers to try to enforce a driving ban and tragic new details surfaced about yet another fatal victim.
“People are just ignoring the driving ban,” said a frustrated Mark Poloncarz, the executive of Erie County, which includes the hardest-hit city of Buffalo, at a morning press conference.
‘“There’s people joy-riding just to see the snow — why? They’re causing problems,” he said.
“It’s not martial law,” the pol said of the restriction. “It’s a driving ban as a result of a serious emergency.”
Poloncarz said 100 more National Guard Military Police have been ordered to the area, as well as additional New York State Police from outside the region, to try to combat the hordes of rogue drivers who are crashing and getting stuck in snow mounds, blocking thoroughfares for emergency vehicles.
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New Jersey State Police troopers are being brought in to help cover New York troopers’ regular duties, Poloncarz said.
The majority of the storm-related deaths so far have occurred in Buffalo, where at least 27 people have died.
Follow all the coverage of the deadly winter storm in western New York
Other fatal victims were reported in the towns of Lockport, Cheektowaga, Amherst, Depew, and Williamsville, bringing the toll up to 32, the Buffalo News said.
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Among the newly identified dead was Abdul Sharif, 26, who left his nine-months-pregnant wife at home around noon Saturday during the snowstorm to buy groceries including milk, his family told the News.
Sharif’s wife hadn’t wanted her husband to go out in the storm, but “it was his nature to help,’’ a source with the family told the News, adding that the mom-to-be is set to give birth in about a week.
When Sharif failed to return home or answer calls and texts from his wife, frantic kin posted Facebook pleas for help in finding him.
Sharif’s empty car was eventually discovered Sunday on a local road, and his body was found outside.
“We don’t know what happened to him,’’ Sharif’s weeping brother, Mohammed Omar, told the outlet. “We know that he told his wife he was going to buy milk.”
Anndel Taylor, 22, also died during the storm when she became trapped in her car in Buffalo for at least 18 hours before being found dead in the vehicle on Christmas Eve.
The young woman had sent a terrifying video to her sisters while trapped in her car.
“She called 911 and she was waiting for them,” Taylor’s mom, Wanda Brown Steele, told WSOC-TV.
“Everybody that tried to get to her got stuck. Fire department, police, everybody got stuck,” the mom said — adding she was puzzled why the “state that is known for snow” didn’t have emergency vehicles able to operate throughout the monster storm.
The storm’s fatal upstate victims also included William “Romello” Clay, who was found frozen to death outside on the street in Buffalo on his 56th birthday.
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