The drunk New York driver accused of the fatal July 4 crash has a long criminal record

The suspected drunk driver in the deadly Fourth of July party horror on the Lower East Side has a long criminal record – including a frenzied attack on an addiction counseling intern and an arrest for “driving under the influence” near a Wisconsin town where a madman plowed an SUV into a Christmas parade.

Violence and alcohol-fueled chaos surrounded 44-year-old Daniel Christopher Hyden long before he rammed a pickup truck into a crowded park Thursday night, killing three people and injuring eight, according to police, court records, law enforcement sources and his own records show.

Atiba Boyce, 41, told the Washington Post that Hyden, his teacher at a drug counseling school in East Harlem, exploded and threw a chair at him during a class in February.

“I never actually smelled alcohol on his breath when he was teaching, but something was wrong, I don’t know what it was,” Boyce said Friday, noting that he didn’t think it was far-fetched that Hyden was the suspect in the fatal accident.

“He was very aggressive.”

According to law enforcement sources, police charged Hyden with assault and harassment for the Feb. 29 incident.

According to the sources, there were also two other assault cases in the past between the NYPD and Hyden in January 2020 and October 2022, which have since been closed.

Hyden, a drug counselor and self-described “former professional addict,” was not shy about making his battle with addiction public.

He has served in a variety of positions caring for other addicts across the city, from Montefiore to Lincoln Hospital to a nonprofit called Services for UnderServed. He also authored a book called The Sober Addict, in which he alluded to numerous run-ins with the law.

“I have taken many mugshots over the years and can honestly say I have a fascinating gallery of embarrassing images that show the crippling effects of addiction,” he wrote.

“Like many people with my illness, my encounters with the police and in prison were attributed to my use and abuse.”

One such legal dispute arose in Wisconsin in 2015 when a local police officer spotted Hyden doing so, according to court documents obtained by The Post.

Hyden told the officer he was driving back from an Oktoberfest celebration in Milwaukee where he “only drank one pitcher of beer,” records say.

However, the officer noted that Hyden was slurring his speech and smelled of beer, according to the recordings. His blood alcohol content was 0.13%, which is above the legal limit of 0.08% in Wisconsin, records say.

According to records, a glass mug containing three inches of beer was found in Hyden’s car.

The arrest came near Waukeska, where in 2021 a crazed man named Darrell Brooks drove an SUV through a Christmas parade, leaving six people dead and more than 60 injured – a holiday horror with an eerie, if inaccurate, parallel to the Independence Day carnage linked to Hyden.

Wisconsin court records show that Hyden was convicted twice of drunken driving in New Jersey in 2006 and 2011.

Hyden eventually pleaded guilty to a third-offense drunken driving charge in Wisconsin and was sentenced to 130 days in jail, records show.

Susan Opper, district attorney for Waukesha County, said she regrets the deadly incident on the Lower East Side.

“Here in Waukesha, we fully understand the pain and suffering of all those affected when a motor vehicle is used as a weapon against innocent people who are trying to enjoy a holiday gathering,” she said in a statement.

“If the allegation that the driver was impaired at the time of the incidents is proven true, we are outraged and hope that he will be held fully accountable.”

Hyden’s most recent run-in with the law before the accident was a fight with Boyce in February at the vocational school in East Harlem, police said.

Boyce said the argument broke out after he complained to a supervisor at Recoveries R Us about Hyden’s condescending and antagonistic behavior.

He said Hyden threatened him, prepared to fight and attacked him.

“We had a little argument,” Boyce said.

A spokesperson for Recoveries R Us, where the incident occurred, told The Post they could not comment on Hyden or the accident, citing an ongoing investigation into the February assault.

According to sources, Hyden had punched Boyce in the eye and was facing assault charges.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for information on the status of the case on Friday.

Boyce told the Post he wanted prosecutors to seek anger management therapy or community service for Hyden.

“I wanted him to deal with his emotions because what I said should not have caused him to react like that,” he said.

“It just seems like there was something underneath.”

Additional reporting by Megan Palin