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SUV collision leaves rubble, worried neighbors
By SHADI RAHIMI
Published May 29, 2006
ST. PETERSBURG – Police are searching for the driver of an SUV who fled after smashing into an apartment building Sunday, causing its lower facade to crumble.
The three tenants of the two-story building, at 1909 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. S, were not injured and were staying with relatives, police said Monday.
Police are investigating the accident, which was reported at 10:11 p.m. It left a pile of broken wood and concrete where a wall once stood.
The building’s owner, Roderick Jacques Godwin, 33, of St. Petersburg, owns at least one other apartment building in St. Petersburg, at 4242 13th Ave. S, which faces several building code violations.
Godwin could not be reached for comment.
Neighbors who live on either side of the building said they worry often about car accidents.
“It’s dangerous, they need to monitor the street,” said James Pitt, 49, who lives next door. “People are always driving at high speed.”
Drivers race down the dirt alley behind the apartment building, often to escape police, said Anthony Mulligan, 48, a cab driver who has lived in the area for six years.
“It’s a big problem. We have lots of little kids here,” he said. “We need speed bumps every 50 feet, and some paving on the alley roads.”
Mulligan said a car smashed into a metal post of a fence in the alley, which remains bent.
He said another car zooming through the alley last year crashed into the wooden fence surrounding his home, which sits directly behind the building that was hit Sunday.
Neighbors said the tenant on the first floor was in the back of the building at the time of the accident. The front half of her apartment is now exposed to the street.
A wooden nightstand in one room lay overturned, near a bundle of pink plastic flowers and an empty pack of Newport menthol cigarettes.
Outside, a box spring lay atop two mattresses. Window frames with shattered glass lay on either side.
Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed reporting to this story.
[Last modified May 29, 2006, 22:36:21]
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