Police closed down Winthrop Avenue south of Whalley around 5:30 after a blue Lincoln Continental collided with a Grand Cherokee, sending the Cherokee’s 24-year-old driver to the hospital.
As a fire emergency crew attended to the victim, Officer Sheree Biros interviewed members of a small crowd that had gathered.
Crystal Evans (pictured) didn’t see the crash. She did see the Lincoln’s driver fleeing, she said.
Evans said she was driving very nearby at the time of the crash. Someone called her to tell her someone had just crashed into her brother’s car. So she headed to the scene — in time to see the Lincoln’s driver flee the scene, “popping” an inflated air bag and trailing smoke; and in time to see her brother slumped back in the front seat of the Cherokee surrounded by emergency workers.
Her brother was breathing and conscious. He went by ambulance to the Hospital of St. Raphael. His injuries were later described as minor.
Tina Weston (pictured) didn’t see the crash either. She heard it. She was upstairs in her apartment when it occurred. She rushed outside to find her parked Buick smashed, too.
“I came down, and it was too much,” Weston said. “Park on the street, you pay taxes. You do this, you do that. You pay your insurance. Somebody hit him. He crashed into me and fucked my car up.”
It turns out the accident was the injured Cherokee driver’s fault, according to Lt. Jeff Hoffman. The other driver fled because … the Lincoln he was driving had been reported stolen out of Ansonia.
He ditched the Lincoln not far from the scene, then ran away.
Officer Renee Forte brought crack canine Bitang to the scene, but in this case (unlike others) the pooch didn’t find the perp.