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Boy pinned after starting car
It is unclear how the 7-year-old ended up underneath the vehicle, which a passer-by and his mother lifted to free him. He was flown to a hospital.
By THOMAS LAKE
Published July 22, 2006
PORT RICHEY - A 7-year-old boy was pinned beneath a Lincoln Town Car on Friday after he apparently cranked the ignition, shifted gears and somehow got out while the car was still rolling. John Kozlowski was flown to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, where he was listed in critical condition Friday evening. He may not have made it that far if not for a stranger who helped the boy's mother lift the car in what one witness described as a superhuman display of strength. Just before 5 p.m., Antonia Kozlowski gave her son the keys to the Town Car on Turnbridge Drive so he could open the doors and release some of the heat from the sweltering afternoon, said Trooper Jackie Hollis of the Florida Highway Patrol. John started the car, according to an FHP report. It seems no one saw what happened next, but his mother came outside to find that the car had cut down the mailbox and knocked over a portable basketball hoop. John's head was beneath a wheel. She screamed. A man in an old blue sport utility vehicle stopped and got out. Neighbor April Hurlburt said the man and the mother somehow lifted the 4,000-pound sedan off the boy just long enough to free him. "I don't know where he came from," Hurlburt said. "But thank God for him." John was taking shallow breaths when paramedics arrived, she said. After they took him away, his red T-shirt lay in the street next to a single black flip-flop. The white Town Car was parked in front of the house with the rear tire halfway on the sidewalk. Kozlowski stood on the sidewalk wailing. "He's a great little kid," neighbor Frank Hurlburt said. "If anyone could survive this, that kid could." The man who may have saved John's life was nowhere to be found. He took off before anyone could get his name.
[Last modified July 21, 2006, 22:31:29]
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