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Two Dead After Car Drives Off Q-Bridge
October 21, 2003
By KIM MARTINEAU, Courant Staff Writer
NEW HAVEN -- Two men were killed when their car hurtled off a highway bridge spanning the Quinnipiac River Sunday or early Monday and smashed into a warehouse along the city's industrial waterfront.
Police had tentatively identified the men but would not release their names until their families had been notified. The car was registered in Virginia.
Workers who were emptying goods out of a warehouse on Fulton Terrace discovered the wreck mid-morning Monday when they moved a stack of pallets. The pallets revealed a hole punched through the concrete wall of the warehouse, and through the hole they saw a badly smashed car. Paul Sargent at first thought it was a junk car someone had dumped behind the building. Then he saw a body folded inside the passenger seat and another, a few feet away, sprawled facedown in the weeds.
"I saw a hand, then the hair on his leg," he said. "Then I knew it was real."
The car was too badly smashed to immediately identify its make, but police later described it as a 1992 Honda. The car sat as it had landed: in a crushed nose-dive, hidden between a cinderblock warehouse and a steep highway embankment. The roof had to be sawed off to remove the man trapped inside.
Police were reconstructing the accident and trying to determine when the crash occurred. No one reported it, which is puzzling, said police Sgt. J. Paul Vance, given the number of cars that pass over the bridge.
Police know the accident happened after 10 a.m. Sunday, when one of the men reportedly dropped someone off at a New York City airport in a borrowed car. The man later picked up the second passenger, and the two men were traveling to someplace in New England, said Vance, but he wouldn't say where.
The car flipped off the northbound lane of the Q-bridge, officially known as the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge, into a desolate stretch of warehouses and giant oil tanks where it could have gone days or weeks without being discovered.
Sargent, the warehouse manager for Colony Hardware Supply Inc., said it was a fluke he had found it at all; his tool distribution company has been slowly transferring goods from the rented warehouse on Fulton Terrace to its headquarters across the street.
He was still shaken by the find and refused to go on camera to discuss it.
"If I had pulled someone from a crack in the ice or a burning building, I'd go on TV for an interview," he said. "Not for something like this."
Two Dead After Car Drives Off Q-Bridge
October 21, 2003
By KIM MARTINEAU, Courant Staff Writer
NEW HAVEN -- Two men were killed when their car hurtled off a highway bridge spanning the Quinnipiac River Sunday or early Monday and smashed into a warehouse along the city's industrial waterfront.
Police had tentatively identified the men but would not release their names until their families had been notified. The car was registered in Virginia.
Workers who were emptying goods out of a warehouse on Fulton Terrace discovered the wreck mid-morning Monday when they moved a stack of pallets. The pallets revealed a hole punched through the concrete wall of the warehouse, and through the hole they saw a badly smashed car. Paul Sargent at first thought it was a junk car someone had dumped behind the building. Then he saw a body folded inside the passenger seat and another, a few feet away, sprawled facedown in the weeds.
"I saw a hand, then the hair on his leg," he said. "Then I knew it was real."
The car was too badly smashed to immediately identify its make, but police later described it as a 1992 Honda. The car sat as it had landed: in a crushed nose-dive, hidden between a cinderblock warehouse and a steep highway embankment. The roof had to be sawed off to remove the man trapped inside.
Police were reconstructing the accident and trying to determine when the crash occurred. No one reported it, which is puzzling, said police Sgt. J. Paul Vance, given the number of cars that pass over the bridge.
Police know the accident happened after 10 a.m. Sunday, when one of the men reportedly dropped someone off at a New York City airport in a borrowed car. The man later picked up the second passenger, and the two men were traveling to someplace in New England, said Vance, but he wouldn't say where.
The car flipped off the northbound lane of the Q-bridge, officially known as the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge, into a desolate stretch of warehouses and giant oil tanks where it could have gone days or weeks without being discovered.
Sargent, the warehouse manager for Colony Hardware Supply Inc., said it was a fluke he had found it at all; his tool distribution company has been slowly transferring goods from the rented warehouse on Fulton Terrace to its headquarters across the street.
He was still shaken by the find and refused to go on camera to discuss it.
"If I had pulled someone from a crack in the ice or a burning building, I'd go on TV for an interview," he said. "Not for something like this."
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