Newark first responders rescue man from mangled car after shooting, crash
NEWARK, N.J. -- Police are looking for the gunman who shot a man at a banquet hall in Newark before a driver crashed while trying to get the man to the hospital.
Surveillance video shows the now-totaled car crashing and flipping over on Sanford Avenue early Monday morning.
Neighbors said the sound of the collision woke them up.
"You did hear a car speeding and a swerve, and then you heard just like an explosion," one man said. "Car upside down, people screaming."
According to police, three people in the car were fleeing the shooting scene several blocks away at the Family Manor Restaurant and Banquet Hall.
Investigators said the man was shot at the restaurant and then became trapped in the vehicle when it crashed. He was extricated by Newark firefighters and rushed to the hospital.
A male driver and a woman in the car were trying to get the shooting victim to the hospital, police said.
"Hit the pole and hit all this. It flipped and flipped and flipped. You could just hear it and I felt it through my whole body," said witness Teresa Linico. "The engine of the vehicle was all the way across the street, diagonal. The car did not have an engine in it anymore. It was so smashed."
The shooting victim and woman were hospitalized in stable condition.
The car crashed into the retaining wall of Jacqueline Helper's home.
"I woke up to a loud bang and my husband telling me to get out, something has happened, and when we came out here this is what we saw," said Helper.
It's the second time something like this happened, Helper said.
"I was lucky the last time that the car didn't hit the property, but the majority of the time the house and the retaining wall hasn't been spared," she said.
A transformer was knocked down in the crash, causing a power outage on Abinger Place from Silver Street to South Orange Avenue, police said.
Residents said drivers speed through the area all the time. They want the city to install speed bumps on the road.
"These people speeding, they need bump stops. There's a school down the street and I walk in the morning, no crossing guard," one woman said.
Neighbors said the crash should be a wake-up call for Newark officials to do something about the road.
