3 taken to hospital after collision involving police cruiser in Newport
NEWPORT, Ky. (WKRC) - A camera captured the moment a police cruiser crashed through the doors of a corner store in Newport.
The entry of Marco's Market is now just plywood where a police cruiser came flying into the store at 11:30 Sunday night. A police report states the officer was traveling south on Central Avenue just as a woman in a white sedan was traveling west on 11th Street. Police say she ran a red light, The officer swerved, she hit him and he crashed into the store.
The video caught by Wahid “Marco” Alkhatib’s surveillance camera is remarkable. He mounted the camera to get video of robbers coming through his front door. Instead, he got a cop.
“I thank God nobody was in the store. If they were, it’s a different story, you know,” said Alkhatib.
He showed Local 12 how at about 10 p.m., his employee locked up and left. Then, 90 minutes later, chaos.
Here are 911 calls immediately after the crash:
Caller: The police was in an accident.
Call-taker: The police officer was in an accident?
Caller: Yes. He hit another car when he was coming up here with lights on and he ran into a building.
Call-taker: What's going on?
Caller: I don't know. There's a car inside the store. I don't have my glasses on...There could be some injuries. It looks really really bad.
“We heard this loud crunch and we came to the front door and there was a car here in the street. The whole front end was totaled and I called 911,” said witness Dave Peabody.
Peabody says he didn't hear any siren prior to the crash -- neither did Tanya Foster. She says she first ran to the white sedan after the crash.
“There was blood all over her face,” said Foster. “But she was screaming, ‘Her baby, her baby!’ And I just got in the car and got the baby out and took the baby in the house. There was no sense in the baby staying out here in the cold.“
You can see in the video a woman helping the officer from his car. Foster says her husband asked him if he was OK.
“He’s like, ’Where am I? What happened?’ And then he told him where he was. He thought he was somewhere else. He says, ‘No, you’re right here at 11th and Central,’” said Foster.
As for Alkhatib, just watching the video is traumatic.
“I’m still shocked. I can’t believe it,” he said.
Police say the woman in the white sedan believed her baby was choking, so she was observing her in the rearview mirror when she entered the intersection. The woman, her baby and the police officer all went to the hospital with minor injuries. They were treated and released.
