An infant is dead and her mother has been seriously injured after an erratic driver going the wrong way caused a chain-reaction crash on a New York City street, WABC-TV reports.
Investigators say two men inside a 2017 Honda Civic were going the wrong direction on a one-way street in Brooklyn around 6:30 p.m. Saturday when the car crashed into another vehicle.
That second vehicle then went barreling into the sidewalk, where a woman and man were walking their 3-month-old daughter in a stroller, WCBS-TV reports.
The child was thrown 15 to 20 feet, one witness told the New York Post.
“My cousin heard the impact and we went to the window and we heard huge screams of ‘oh my God,’ and then there was a woman lying down on the floor,” witness Anne Sophie Plume told WABC-TV. “We thought that it was a hit-and-run because there was just running everywhere. So we knew it was serious, it was pretty horrible.”
The baby was rushed to an area hospital in critical condition and was later pronounced dead; her 33-year-old mother was in critical condition Saturday evening at Methodist Hospital and had undergone surgery, according to WABC-TV.
The 36-year-old father was also injured and hospitalized, and a 49-year-old woman who was driving the second vehicle was examined at a hospital but was not seriously injured. She will not be facing any charges in connection with the incident.
Police arrested a 29-year-old man who was the passenger in the Honda Civic; charges against him are pending, according to WCBS-TV. The driver who caused the crash fled the scene and has not yet been caught.
A witness told the Post that he saw the speeding Honda almost strike some bikers several blocks from the crash site.
Another witness told the Post that the family “went flying” and the driver got out of the vehicle and ran away.
“The mother was unconscious. The father picked up the baby and tried to run [her] to the hospital,” the witness, who called 911, told the Post.
Jonathan Pettibone told the Post that he saw the Honda heading “very erratically and very fast” in the wrong direction.
“Shortly thereafter, I heard a big bang and I said to myself the way they were driving, it had something to do with that car,” Pettibone told the newspaper.
Pettibone then walked to the area where he heard the crash and saw what happened.
“I heard people screaming and came over here. I saw a man holding his baby and it was bleeding and a woman was on the ground,” Pettibone told the Post.
He added: “It’s awful. I live in New York and you see crazy things. This is one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen. There’s aggressive driving then there is this. This was another level I’ve never seen.”
Neta Chizhik told the Post that she saw police run into the C train station as they tried to track down the driver.
“This whole area has a lot of young families,” Chizhik told the Post. “Everyone is walking around with strollers. It’s really scary.”
As of Sunday morning, the crash scene was still intact behind police tape and the stroller remained visible on the sidewalk, according to footage from WCBS-TV.
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[Featured Photo: Pixabay]
