$140,000. That’s what Christine Riordan still owes the MTA after walking out of Nassau District Court on Monday with a misdemeanor reckless driving conviction. It’s the one piece of her plea deal she hasn’t finished.
The crash itself happened on Sept. 30, around 8 p.m. Riordan lost control of her car near the corner of Nassau Boulevard and North Avenue in Garden City. She hit two parked vehicles, punched through a fence, and wound up on the LIRR tracks near the Nassau Boulevard station. No one was hurt. A passenger was in the car with her at the time, according to court records.
The legal road from that September night to Monday’s courtroom took months and some sharp turns. Original charges included DWI, criminal mischief, and reckless endangerment. Riordan pleaded not guilty to all of them. Then in January she reversed course, entering guilty pleas to reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. Her attorney had disputed claims from the start that she’d been drinking before the crash.
The plea deal she accepted wasn’t light. Nassau County District Attorney’s Office required her to pay $140,000 in restitution to the MTA for track damage, complete 100 hours of community service, finish an aggressive driving course, attend a M.A.D.D. Victim Impact Panel, and undergo a treatment evaluation. If she met every condition, prosecutors agreed to drop the charges down to reckless driving and disorderly conduct, a violation rather than a felony.
By Monday, she’d done nearly everything. Community service: done. Driving course: done. Treatment evaluation: done. The $140,000? Still outstanding.
The Nassau County District Attorney’s Office didn’t leave any ambiguity about what happens next if she doesn’t pay up. “If the defendant does not complete her restitution payment and comply with the agreed upon conditions, she will be found in violation of those conditions and NCDA will seek appropriate remedies, including jail time,” a spokesperson told reporters.
That’s not a warning you want hanging over your head. Riordan’s got a conviction on her record and a six-figure debt to a public transit agency. It’s a long way from where she was before the crash.
From 2015 to 2025, Riordan served as president of Adelphi University in Garden City, the school’s first female president in its 14-decade history. Adelphi is a private university with roughly 8,000 students, rooted in Nassau County. Her tenure ran a full decade, through pandemic shutdowns, campus expansions, and whatever else a university president handles in that stretch.
She stepped down from the job in June 2025. The crash came three months later, in September 2025.
The Long Island Press reported the guilty plea outcome in April 2026, and the court’s Monday ruling drew renewed attention to a case that’s been grinding through the Nassau District Court system since the fall.
What taxpayers and transit riders want to know is whether the MTA actually gets its money back. The authority absorbed real damage when Riordan’s car tore through that fence and landed on the tracks. Repairs, inspection, service disruption costs — those don’t disappear just because a court reached a resolution. The $140,000 figure reflects what the MTA says it cost to make things right. Whether that bill gets paid, and when, is still an open question as of today.
Riordan’s conviction is officially a misdemeanor. She’s out of Nassau District Court for now. But the DA’s office made clear in 2026 that the case isn’t closed until the restitution is paid. If she can’t cover it, prosecutors said they won’t hesitate to go back in front of a judge.
Thirty months after she left Adelphi’s Garden City campus and roughly 8 months after the crash on Nassau Boulevard, Christine Riordan is technically a convicted driver with an unpaid debt to the public transit system that serves the region she once led in an academic capacity. That’s where things stand.