Car Slams Into Ambulance, Injures 8 Including Kids, Firemen
CHICAGO (STNG) -- Eight people were injured, including two children and two Chicago firefighters, after a car collided with an ambulance on the Northwest Side on Friday morning.
Several ambulances were called to the scene as part of an EMS Plan 1 response to the two-vehicle crash about 9:10 a.m. at Addison Street and Menard Avenue, according to Fire Media Affairs Cmdr. Will Knight.
A fire department spokesman on the scene said a woman driving an Acura southbound on Menard collided with an eastbound Chicago Fire Department ambulance in the intersection.
The ambulance was en route to Our Lady of Resurrection Medical Center with two patients inside.
The woman’s car flipped upside down. Another car rammed the woman’s car and then a third vehicle rear-ended that car, the spokesman said. The third vehicle fled the scene.
Witnesses rushed to help the woman in the Acura and her two young children out of the car. The children were bleeding badly, according to witnesses.
One witness, Edwin Martinez, lives about a block from the scene of the crash and was in front of his home when the two vehicles collided.
“I was standing down the street warming up my motorcycle. I heard the sirens and the horns. He [the ambulance driver] hit her so hard he flipped the car. The ambulance was going about 40 [mph] and she was going 10 or 15,” Martinez said.
“And he just slammed into her and flipped her right over. I rushed over here and I started to pull the little girl from the backseat of the car. The mother was on her hands and knees screaming, ‘God please don’t take my daughter from me.’
“The girl was lifeless. I put my sweater under her head. The guys from the ambulance [the firefighters] were all shook up and didn’t know what to do. They were just freaking out,” Martinez said.
The children were taken in serious condition to Children’s Memorial Hospital. Two firefighters, reportedly male, were taken to Swedish Covenant Hospital in fair condition.
One person, reportedly the children’s mother, was taken in serious to critical condition to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge.
Two patients were aboard the ambulance at the time of the crash. They were taken in fair condition to Our Lady of Resurrection Medical Center, Knight said.
Neither the firefighters nor the ambulance patients suffered life-threatening injuries, mostly bumps and bruises, he said. A woman from the second vehicle was taken to West Suburban Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the spokesman said.
Neighbors who live near the injured mother said she is a good mother.
Copyright 2008 STNG Wire, The Chicago Sun-Times. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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