Crash on West Cedar
By Marco Schaden
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — Around 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 27, a car driving east on West Cedar St. reared to the right and drove straight into a tree at full speed. The collision with the tree resulted in the car rolling over and resting on its side. The driver, a young male, got out of the car without any harmful injuries, despite the car being heavily damaged.
The tree that was hit by the car laid right in front of 18 West Cedar St. and the residents nearby were quick to react. “We just heard a big crash … we ran out and we just saw the car flipped. I went over and the guy was trying to get out of the car, so I just lifted up the handle because he was having a hard time pulling the handle, and then he pushed it up and I held it open,” said Sarah Hands, a resident of 15 West Cedar St. Hands was the first person on the scene and said luckily there were no others cars on the street at the time of the accident.
Gas began to leak from the car and the keys were still in the ignition, so an early call to 911 was essential for getting emergency services quickly on scene. “I was on the phone with my dad in the kitchen and I heard this loud bang, so I ran outside onto the porch and I saw this car completely flipped over,” said resident Maddy McKenney. “Since I was on the phone, I decided to call 911. I gave them my information, told them about the situation and [the driver] exited the car safely with no injuries and there was no one in the car, so that was good.”
A tow truck was the first on scene and emergency services were quick to follow. “They were all there within under five minutes,” said Hands. The police cut off the west and east entrances onto West Cedar Street and the fire department quickly got to work. They broke the windshield so they could take the keys out and turn off the car and the fire department laid down sand on the street to cover gas leakage from the car. Residents of West Cedar Street started coming outside and observing the scene. The street would be shut down for little more than an hour, so residents had nowhere to go.
As for the cause of the accident, no one is sure what it is and the driver did not give a reason to the residents that were first on the scene, but that has not stopped them from pondering. “He directly hit the tree, so we were assuming that he was texting or [engaged in] some sort of distraction. I told my friends that we should take this as a lesson to be careful, especially with driving,” said McKenney.
Lesson learned for onlookers of the destroyed vehicle.
“It has to be a lesson learned for everyone. We can’t be on our phones texting or anything because it’s such a narrow street and you could easily hit someone that is hanging out on their porch,” said Hands as she took in the moment and what it meant for her and her fellow neighbors.
