At least seven people – including two children – were injured on Friday morning in a two-vehicle accident that caused a car to topple over in an open-air restaurant in Manhattan, police said.
The chain reaction shock came shortly after 8:30 am, when a white van hit a black sedan, driving the car through the dining area at the intersection of East 50th Street and Second Avenue.
The van, which was traveling south on Second Avenue, kept going, crashing into a fruit stand, the sources said.
Witnesses said the van started breaking into things between East 51 and 50, before stopping at East 49th.
Juan Carlos Quispe, 44, said his brother, who was waiting on East 50th Street and Second Avenue at the time, narrowly missed it.
“My brother said, ‘Hey Carlos, it’s an accident,'” said Quispe, who was coming from Third Avenue. “When I came, I saw two small children on the sidewalk. They were scared.
They were shaking. I didn’t see any blood. “
Quispe said he saw an Asian woman lying on her back near 49 on Second Avenue.
“She was shaking, shaking,” he recalled. “She had her eyes closed. She seemed to be in pain. The ambulance came and took her away. People said she would be fine because she moved her hands and legs ”.
He added of his brother: “Thank God he is fine. He could have been hit. “
Videos on the Citizen app show the dramatic consequences – piles of debris scattered at the intersection outside a Starbucks, as well as a traffic light and street sign that have been knocked over.
Airbags inside the sedan, which had damage to the front, were deployed.
A driver was taken into custody and may be under the influence, police said.
The FDNY said seven people – five adults and two children – were taken to Bellevue Hospital with non-fatal injuries.
One of them broke his hip, while the children suffered bruises from the wreckage, sources said.
No one was in the open-air dining area at the time of the accident, police said.