A flatbed truck driver smashed a livery cab up a curb and into a woman on the sidewalk on Tuesday afternoon, according to police and an eyewitness.
The cabbie was heading down Court Street towards Carroll Gardens at 12:46 pm and was attempting to turn right onto Atlantic Avenue when the truck also turned right, but from the left lane, and bashed the cab up the curb, police said. The taxi then took out a light pole, slammed into the 29-year-old pedestrian, and crunched into a building, cops said. A witness said the victim was “broken from the waist down.”
Emergency medical personnel rushed the woman to Lutheran Medical Center in serious condition, police said.
The victim was on the Court Street sidewalk near Atlantic Avenue when the truck set the black Lincoln Town Car on its crash course, the witness said. A truck advertising Bruce Supply Corp., a Long Island contractor supplier, was pulled over at the scene three hours later. Officers gave the driver a ticket for an improper turn but had not arrested anyone by Wednesday morning, according to the NYPD.
Theresa Gear, a clerk at a nearby market, did not see the accident, but was shaken up nonetheless.
“That could have been anyone standing there,” she said.
Gear also noted that the streets nearby are dicey.
“This is a really dangerous area,” she said.
Lutheran is located about five miles from where the crash occurred, while the former site of Long Island College Hospital, which stopped accepting ambulances in May ahead of the hospital’s closure, is less than one-third of a mile away. The Cobble Hill hospital lacked a trauma center when it was open and it is unclear if it would have been equipped to treat this crash victim.
