Woman Injured When Wrong-Way Driver Flies Through Brooklyn Intersection In Stolen SUV
NEW YORK(CBSNewYork) -- A car speeding away from police crashed into a woman walking her dog, and somehow she survived.
The spectacular Brooklyn crash sent the woman to the hospital.
Police were following a stolen vehicle whose driver decided to go the wrong way down a one way street.
As CBS2's Lou Young reported, the aftermath was stunning. The SUV was off its wheels in a tangle of dangling wires and broken wood. Another car was bashed and broken nearby, following a wrong way wreck in the heart of Brooklyn.
"It was a car coming opposite," one witness said.
More than that, it was an apparent car thief fleeing police by heading north on southbound-only Hemlock Street, clipping the Toyota Avalon on Ridgewood Avenue just before 10 a.m. and running down a woman who had just stepped into the intersection while walking her dog.
Nilda Orta, a nurse who lives on Hemlock Street, was amazed that the victim survived, and was alert and speaking.
"She was talking, she was saying like 'somebody please help me, somebody help me,' but I told them not to move her because that's a car accident," Orta said.
Paramedics took the 52-year-old woman to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in serious, but stable condition. There was nothing anyone could do for the dog.
Surveillance footage shows the SUV barreling through the intersection and sweeping the woman out of sight. A police car arrived seconds later.
As is often the case in crashes like this the offending driver was not seriously injured. The other driver's injuries were also described as minor. Police said charges were pending against the suspected car thief and confirmed that the 20-year-old suspect was running from cops when the accident took place.
Cops said the driver traveled two blocks down the wrong way street before the crash.
