An elderly woman was killed and three other pedestrians were injured after a horrific chain reaction car crash in Harlem today, police said.
The elderly woman, 89-year-old Leonia White, was on the corner of W 145th Street near 7th Avenue with the other victims when tragedy struck at 12:10 p.m.
Ramon Tisa, the driver of the Lincoln Town Car, was making a left turn onto West 145th Street when a Toyota pickup truck heading southbound on 7th Avenue plowed into it, police said. The pick-up truck spun around, hurtled onto the sidewalk, and smashed into the pedestrians, cops and witnesses said.
“After you heard the big boom you heard the screeches,” said Khalid Fambro, 15, of the Bronx.
“The lady couldn’t move. She was lying on her back and there was a lot of blood,” Luke Shaw, 40, said.
Witnesses said the pick-up truck finally came to halt after its front tire blew, narrowly missing commuters at a nearby bus stop.
”If the wheel hadn’t blown out, he would’ve killed everyone at the bus stop,” Shaw added.
“It was a whole lot of chaos, you couldn’t even go over there,” added a nearby resident. “People were running around frantic and concerned, trying to help.”
A relative of the pick-up truck driver said his cousin was still traumatized from the impact. “He had the green light and after the collision he spun around. He’s really shaken up.”
The pedestrians and Tisa were taken to St. Luke’s Hospital while White was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital.
“This accident was really hard,” said Tony Castillo, Tisa’s co-worker at Kennedy Radio Dispatch.”I know he’s going to feel really bad when he finds out somebody died because he has family too.”
Police are still investigating but no criminality is suspected.