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Witnesses say the driver looked angry and appeared to keep accelerating just before crashing into the block house.
By ANNE LINDBERG, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 26, 2001
PINELLAS PARK -- Jeanne Park was watching her son pull out of her apartment parking lot when she heard something loud approaching.
She looked up to see a battered green pickup truck.
The truck suddenly jerked. She saw a barbecue grill fall off the back.
"The grill was smoking," Park said.
As the truck bucked, it accelerated. Park got a look at the driver's face as he passed.
"It was very angry," she said. The driver went "faster and faster. I was watching him drive, then BAM!"
The truck jumped a curb, went briefly airborne, then rammed into a concrete block house at 6991 58th Way. It came to rest in a bedroom.
Smoke billowed everywhere. Park's son, Robert Howland, ran toward the house and tried to kick in the door. When it wouldn't budge, he turned to help the driver. But there was too much smoke.
"I wanted to jump through the window, pull the guy out, but there was so much smoke," Howland said.
Park said she was terrified at the bizarre sight before her: "I was screaming at the top of my lungs, "It's going to blow! Get out of there!' "
The driver, Eric Allen Green, was still alive when Pinellas Park rescue workers pulled him from the rubble. Green, 40, of 5701 First Ave. N in St. Petersburg, was taken to Bayfront Medical Center, where his condition was stable Tuesday night.
No charges have been filed.
Green was the only person hurt. No one except a dog was home when the accident happened. The dog was uninjured and neighbors were caring for it until the owner returned.
Police would not say who lives in the house, saying the incident is still under investigation. But neighbors identified the occupant as Nancy Ritchie. They didn't know whether she had any connection to Green.
While police tried to determine the cause of the crash, witnesses said they are certain Green was upset in the moments before he hit the house.
"I saw the upset, whatever it was, saw it escalate," Park said. "He just kept going. He was focusing. You could see the anger."
Green did not swerve, she said. And she didn't see his brake lights come on, so he apparently never tried to stop. He just kept accelerating toward the house.
Howland agreed that Green never tried to stop.
"No brakes came on," he said. "He just jumped the curb and went airborne."
Another driver who would not give his name described the events from his perspective. He said he was stopped at a nearby traffic light when he noticed he had pulled too far into the intersection. He began backing up.
When he looked up, something went "whoosh" as it passed in front of his car. Green's truck was going so fast, he said, that it was hard to tell if it was "a car or a jet."