New York — A truck crane with a boom tore through the vehicle at a construction site in the Bronx on Tuesday, smashing a car parked at a traffic light.
It happened around 10:30 a.m. and the driver, 22-year-old Danielle Cruz, had a hand injury and a cut to her lip.
WATCH: Surveillance video captures the moment the boom fell on the vehicle
Cruz, a Lehman College student who was driving to class at the time, described the accident as “it’s happening slowly and fast at the same time.”
She saw the traffic light rip off and expected that something was about to happen, and she said a firefighter told her that if she stopped 3 inches ahead, she would die.
Cruz said that she very much appreciated the good Samaritans who came to her aid and opened the door, because she was not able to.
She was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital for treatment, but surprisingly only suffered minor injuries, possibly from glass.
“It looked like the World Trade Center,” said witness Tessie Williams. “I was standing there, and all of a sudden, I was looking up, and I saw the beam pop up, and it was going down, it was like a movie. I was like, there’s no way this could happen. I heard the crash from the wall where I hit it, and then the car, bam, I just knew that Nobody has died. But thank God, the lady was fine. We opened the door and let her out.”
The boom appears to have been interrupted while lifting the material. The truck did not overturn.
“They were taking a load to the seventh or eighth floor above me when the boom of the crane collapsed across the road, fell on the car behind me and injured one passenger in that vehicle,” said John Saroko, deputy assistant president of the FDNY. “She had, believe it or not, minor injuries. She’s so lucky. She was in the car behind me, and the way the boom crossed the car, I just missed her. She’ll be fine.”
The building under construction appears to have not been damaged.
Inspectors from the Buildings Department responded to the scene, and the FDNY evacuated approximately 29 workers from the site out of extreme caution.
Saroko said the cause of the failure is under investigation.
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