New York: A 25-year-old Indian-origin woman was left to die in a blazing car by her driver following a fiery crash in the US, police said.

Harleen Grewal burned to death on October 13 after Saeed Ahmad, 23, slammed his luxury Infiniti 35G sedan into a concrete barrier on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the New York Daily reported. The driver left the woman passenger to die in the fireball after hailing a cab to take himself to a hospital, it said.

When firefighters put out the flames, they found a badly burned woman in the passenger seat. She was pronounced dead at the scene. While the car was still in flames, Ahmad took himself to Maimonides Medical Centre, police said. He was being treated there for burns to his arms and legs, the report said.

Police caught up with him at the hospital and charged him with manslaughter and other charges. His arraignment was pending in Brooklyn Criminal Court, the report said.

Ahmad had been allegedly driving in and out of the traffic on the expressway before his car hit the barrier, it said.

Ahmad, who lives in Flatlands, admitted to having a few drinks before the crash but was not legally drunk when his blood was tested at the hospital, police said. His brother Waheed, however, claimed that his sibling had tried to rescue the passenger.

“He said the girl that was in the car was stuck in there and he tried to get her out, that’s why his arms were burned,” Waheed said.

The grieving boyfriend of Grewal, who worked for a catering company, said she was a selfless person who always looked out for others. “She would do anything for people,” her boyfriend Karan Singh Dhillon was quoted as saying in the report.