Police Still Looking For Driver Involved In Wild Crash On Bayonne Bridge
BAYONNE, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- It was bedlam on the Bayonne Bridge on Friday morning.
A hit and run seriously injured two people and shut the road down for miles, eventually leaving a Good Samaritan stranded, CBS 2's Steve Langford reported.
A head-on crash in the middle of the night caused the chaos, police said. A van apparently veered off straight into New Jersey-bound traffic, the impact seriously injuring a young man and woman in this car. The bridge was shut down until noon on Friday.
"It's terrible what's happening, I guess, but it happens," said Noha Mourad of Jersey City.
But it's what happened next that caught everyone off guard. A Good Samaritan who pulled over to help got out of his pickup truck, and then suddenly realized the driver who crashed his van in the first place ran over and jumped into his pickup truck and high-tailed it toward Staten Island, according to Port Authority police.
The suspect drove a few miles away from the Bayonne Bridge before dumping the car," CBS 2's Langford reported.
"It was parked half-way out in the street, really in a weird parking spot right in the middle of an intersection," area resident John Meyers said.
Police located the stolen pickup truck a few hours later. Meyers lives across the street from where the suspect ditched the getaway vehicle.
"I saw a charcoal gray pickup truck in the middle of the road with one unmarked police car and one marketed police car. The truck was just sitting there with nobody in it," Meyers said.
The suspect fled the scene, but Port Authority cops said they're confident about making an arrest soon, since the wrecked vehicle he left behind on the Bayonne Bridge, license plates and all, won't exactly allow the hit-and-run and theft suspect to get too far. As for the Good Samaritan, the Port Authority said he doesn't want to talk about his nightmare of a morning commute.
The couple injured in the head-on crash was reportedly from Forked River, N.J. The man, who is 27 years old, suffered cuts to his left arm while the woman, 32, was treated for head lacerations, police said.
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