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A cardiologist was killed in a freak accident on the Long Island Expressway on Wednesday when a metal plate smashed through the windshield of his car and nearly decapitated him, police said.

Dr. Denis Tyras, 57, of Kings Point was struck at 6:15 a.m. after the 14-inch long plate apparently broke loose from a vehicle heading in the opposite direction, police said.

Police said Wednesday night that they were still looking for the driver of the vehicle, who kept going, apparently unaware of what happened. Police said they are hoping video from roadside traffic cameras might help them find the vehicle.

Tyras, who was driving from his home to work at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, was pronounced dead at the scene — the westbound side of the LIE near Maurice Avenue in Queens.

“People are stunned, very shaken,” said Dr. Anthony Gagliardi, St. Vincent’s medical director. “It’s very hard to imagine this actually happened. He was a very important member of our staff — and he’s just not here right now.

“The way he died was very dramatic and just touched everybody.”

Tyras’ relatives, who were too upset Wednesday to speak, crowded his Kings Point home, where he lived with his wife, Linda, and held an annual picnic for his colleagues and their families.

One of Tyras’ neighbors, Albert Sutton, a retired urologist at Long Island Jewish Hospital, where Tyras previously worked, described him as “a gentleman, a respected surgeon and a nice man.”

Dr. Michael Graver, chief heart surgeon at Long Island Jewish, said Tyras, who hired him at the hospital, was a “surgeon’s surgeon” who made his mark about 20 years earlier when he was part of an often-cited study on coronary artery surgery.

All these years later, Tyras, nationally known in his field, according to Graver, could have spent more time pursuing his interests.

He was a big fan of the southwest, where he talked about retiring to, and had a home in Colorado, where he often went skiing, his colleagues said.

But Tyras, who has two adult children, Jonathan and Joslyn, still put in long hours and remained passionate about his profession, still “intellectually honest” with his patients about their options, Graver said. “He was getting toward that time when he was starting to think about slowing down, but he wasn’t ready to,” Graver said. “He was a very thoughtful surgeon....He was a consummate technician and a very thoughtful guy.”

In 1991, Tyras, then the chief of cardiac surgery at Long Island Jewish, joined St. Vincent’s in the same capacity, a role he filled until less than two years ago when he was appointed chief emeritus of cardiac surgery, a position that allowed him more time to pursue the education and research facets of his field.

Gagliardi, whose last conversation with Tyras centered on the struggles of the victim’s beloved New York Knicks, remembered two incidents that summarized Tyras’ humanity.

Once, he said, Tyras, after hearing a colleague compliment Tyras’ necktie, went out and bought the colleague the same tie.

Then on Sept. 11, with the entire hospital anticipating a rush of patients that never materialized, Tyras performed an emergency surgery on a Russian journalist with an aortic aneurysm.

Gagliardi said the journalist came in complaining of chest pains and Tyras “operated on him probably within 45 minutes.”

The accident recalled a November 1998 incident in which Hollywood director Alan Pakula was killed in Melville when a 7-foot steel pipe fell from a tractor trailer and smashed through his windshield.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

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