Police investigate the scene of an accident on a dead-end street where a car containing five passengers plunged into Steinway Creek in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, Saturday, April 5, 2014, in New York. The New York Police Department says four of five people pulled from a vehicle submerged in a New York City creek have died. The fifth apparently escaped serious injury and is in stable condition. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Police investigate the scene of an accident on a dead-end street where a car containing five passengers plunged into Steinway Creek in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, Saturday, April 5, 2014, in New York. The New York Police Department says four of five people pulled from a vehicle submerged in a New York City creek have died. The fifth apparently escaped serious injury and is in stable condition. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Police investigate the scene of an accident on a dead-end street where a car containing five passengers plunged into Steinway Creek in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, Saturday, April 5, 2014, in New York. The New York Police Department says four of five people pulled from a vehicle submerged in a New York City creek have died. The fifth apparently escaped serious injury and is in stable condition. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
NEW YORK, April 5 (Reuters) - Four passengers were killed after a car plunged into a waterway that flows into New York City's East River late on Friday night, police and fire officials said.
Rescue divers responding to a 911 call pulled four occupants - two men and two women - from the vehicle submerged in Steinway Creek. The four were declared dead on arrival at area hospitals, New York Police Department spokesman Adam Navarro said.
The fifth occupant, a 20-year-old man who was the driver, escaped the car on his own with minor injuries. He took a breathalyzer test and was found to be sober and was taken to a hospital where his condition was described as stable, police said.
Police identified the dead as Darius Fletcher, 21; Jada Monique Butts, 19; Jaleel Furtado, 20; and Crystal Gravely, 19. All four lived in East Elmhurst, a middle-class neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens.
Police were unable to confirm reports in local newspapers that the five were friends celebrating a birthday, but confirmed it would have been Gravely's 20th birthday on Saturday.
Police were still investigating the accident, but said that the car, a 2009 Honda Accord, hit a curb in a dead-end street near the Steinway & Sons piano factory in Astoria, Queens, at about 10:30 p.m. (0230 GMT) before rolling into the creek. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Dan Grebler)
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