Two Bronx drivers say they are counting their blessings after narrowly avoiding what could have been a devastating crash Monday morning in Morrisania.<\/p>\n
The crash happened around 11:30 a.m. near the intersection of Boston Road and Union Avenue, where surveillance video captured a car swerving into oncoming traffic before slamming into a parked truck and crashing into a Toyota Highlander.<\/p>\n
The impact was so strong that the Highlander was launched onto another parked vehicle, shattering the windshield.<\/p>\n
Essa Jabbie said he had parked his Toyota Highlander moments earlier and stepped inside a nearby grocery store when he suddenly heard a loud crash outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hear the noise – boom! So I thought, ‘oh, an accident happened,’ and I see my car on top of another car over there,\u201d Jabbie said.<\/p>\n
Jabbie said he missed being inside the vehicle by less than two minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo minutes! Not even two minutes, and accident happens,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a family, I have two girls and this is my wife, so thank God I\u2019m not in my car.\u201d<\/p>\n
While grateful to have avoided being inside during the crash, Jabbie said the accident has left him facing another major challenge – losing the vehicle he relies on to support his family as an Uber driver.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a family, I have to pay my rent and bills,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Another driver whose vehicle was damaged, Tyreq Chiles, said he had also stepped away from his car just moments before the impact.<\/p>\n
Chiles said he had been cleaning out his work vehicle before deciding to leave earlier than planned.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was messy. I did cut some corners, so if I did the full process, who knows how long I would have been in there,\u201d Chiles said.<\/p>\n
He says he is thankful that his decision may have saved his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super grateful. I\u2019m only 26, I still have so much to live for. Literally anything could have happened. You saw how smashed in that car was. Imagine if I was sitting right there,\u201d Chiles said.<\/p>\n
Justice Villaba, who works next door to where the crash happened, said he was among the first people to rush outside after hearing the collision and found the driver trapped inside the vehicle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw he was trapped inside, so I wanted to help him out. I saw oil. I was scared it was going to catch fire,\u201d Villaba said. \u201cHe was disoriented and wasn\u2019t coherent during the first couple seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Villaba said dangerous driving in the area is something he regularly witnesses and believes the outcome could have been even worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank goodness we weren\u2019t out there,\u201d Villaba said. \u201cUsually, we put things in and out this truck. My son\u2019s school is up the block, and they always have literally a class of 20 kids coming up this block, so thank God he ain\u2019t hit nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n
The driver involved in the crash was taken to a local hospital. Witnesses at the scene told News 12 the driver was conscious and able to walk and talk after the collision.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had to have been going well over 25 and on the other side of the street,\u201d Villaba said.<\/p>\n
Police have not yet released additional information about what may have caused the crash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Bronx drivers say they are counting their blessings after narrowly avoiding what could have been a devastating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-267984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}