ST. PETERSBURG, FL \u2014 Friends of Strays, a St. Petersburg-based animal rescue nonprofit, hopes to raise at least $35,000 after its transport van and two of its employees were involved in a Wednesday afternoon crash on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. <\/p>\n
\u201cKrista saved the day with her maneuvering,\u201d Dara Worthington, executive director, told Patch. <\/p>\n
She was driving in the left lane at the time, and with no other vehicles to the right of the van or behind it, she was able to take control of the vehicle and minimize the damage. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey spun around a couple of times and ended up facing south on the northbound lanes,\u201d Worthington said, adding, \u201cI couldn\u2019t sleep that night just thinking about what could have happened. They could have wound up in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crash shut down the bridge for several hours. <\/p>\n
Loveless was brought to an area hospital by ambulance, while Moye stayed at the scene with the animals. <\/p>\n
Among the animals in the van at the time was a carrier of kittens. One kitten was being mean to the others, so Moye scooped it up and held it during the drive back to St. Petersburg to separate them.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe held onto this kitten through the accident,\u201d Worthington said. When her coworkers met her at the crash site, they found her \u201cliterally on the side of the road still holding this kitten.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moye later went to the emergency room.<\/p>\n
\u201cThankfully, neither had major injuries, just bruising and soreness and rash from the seatbelt,\u201d Worthington said. <\/p>\n
See Also: <\/p>\n
One animal was injured in the accident, she added. A puppy broke her paw in the crash and will see a specialist for her injury on Monday. <\/p>\n
Now, Friends of Strays is raising funds to purchase a larger cargo van and to help pay for the puppy\u2019s medical care. <\/p>\n
The van involved in the crash was deemed a total loss. Though insurance will pay out nearly $14,000 for the totaled vehicle, it’s not enough to replace it. <\/p>\n
While the circumstances aren\u2019t ideal, it\u2019s an opportunity for the organization to purchase a larger van to accommodate the nonprofit\u2019s increased focus on driving throughout Florida to pick up animals on euthanasia lists from low-resource shelters, Worthington said. \u201cThat van was not made for long trips.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a difficult year for Friends of Strays and its staff as they lost a coworker and friend months earlier \u201cin a horrible traffic accident,\u201d she added. \u201cBut every time there\u2019s a tragedy or something happens, our staff comes together. It\u2019s just so amazing the love they have for what they do and you can feel the love they have for their teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, FL \u2014 Friends of Strays, a St. Petersburg-based animal rescue nonprofit, hopes to raise at least…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-8469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}