I saw this happen with my own two eyes.
Last Saturday night, too early into Sunday morning, close to four a.m., I saw a person get run over. And the perpetrator car, or rather, the typical, too-big SUV raced away down the street - my street.
True, I had been out drinking glass after glass of champagne, celebrating a friend's birthday, from Buddha Bar (good food and service, lousy management, very suburban crowd on the weekend) to Double Seven (its last weekend before it reopens in its new location in about two months).
My feet were killing me. My big toes throbbed, and I was desperate to disrobe and crawl into bed. I was downing about a quart of water, plus aspirin and antihistamine, when I heard the ruckus. I looked out the window to see a group of club-stragglers, drunk and staggering, yelling and screaming - like they do almost every weekend.
In the last two years, a handful of third-tier "lounge" clubs have opened nearby. Around four in the morning, drunk (and too often belligerent) patrons stumble around the corner to the nearest garage, where they have parked their over-sized, ridiculous vehicles.
Yes, it would seem as though, despite that most cannot see straight, they get into cars and drive from wherever they came in the first place.
The garage also houses a weekend flea market, so two levels of the place are filled with what generally looks like trash-for-sale. It looks like the purveyors, if they can be called that, ransack dilapidated homes in run-down, former steel mill towns in eastern Pennsylvania, and drive them to my street, in an attempt to sell them at orders of magnitude more than they are worth. I am astonished every weekend that people (it seems that many are western European, for all the nattering of languages I overhear) continue to patronize these junk-ware booths. Warhol is long-gone already.
Anyhow, the flea market retains an off-duty policeman to stand at one of the garage doors, or so I have been told.
Back to the drunk fight. Two women were screaming in high-pitched tones. Lots of "muthafuckas," the only discernible word to travel up six stories.
I noticed that one fellow may have been brandishing what looked like a shiny silver pipe. Then, I saw another fellow lay down in front of (a non-flea market entry-driveway) one of the garage entry ways.
He was on on his back, spread-eagled, on a slight angle, his legs extended into the center of the driveway.
Why was he laying there? Did he get whacked on the head by the guy with the pipe? Or was he the guy with the pipe? Did he just pass out cold? Or was he just playing an over-dramatic prank?
No one moved to get him up or out of the way. Time slowed.
Then, a huge SUV barreled down out of the garage, and bump-bump, drove right over this guy's legs. The SUV veered hard to the left and sped west down the street. Away.
I gasped, reached for my phone and dialed 911. The operator picked up fast, and as I described what happened, informed me that police were coming. In fact, I was not off the phone before police arrived, then an FDNY ambulance, more cop cars, all first-responders.
I hung up and stared down in horror.
Some woman shrieked that the SUV had Delaware tags. Who knows - the car was gone.
The cops ran up into the garage, I presume to grill the attendant about the hit-and-run vehicle. Other cops bent down to the guy on the ground, and what felt like forever, finally wrapped his legs in some kind of stabilizing rods, his head in one of those skull braces. They lifted him onto a gurney, into the ambulance, and raced off.
Pretty much that was it. Cops interviews bystanders, nothing much more.
I wonder why none of the onlookers did nothing to move that guy from out of the driveway.
I felt shaken. I could not sleep, indeed, I shivered hours after. Much later Sunday, exhausted and aching, I did not move off the sofa. My mind replayed the scene over and over.
Yesterday, I tried to search NYC-Manhattan police reports, news police blotters, anything. I could not find a word about the incident.
I often kid that (despite the obnoxious noise from these bottom-feeding clubs) we don't get real crime on my street. Since Law and Order films episodes down here so often, I say that we have fake crime on this street.
But I don't know what to make of this event.
Comments