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A 5-year-old girl was shot while sitting in a car in the Bronx on Friday night, police and sources said.
The girl was inside a vehicle near East 213 Street and White Plains Road when a bullet struck her in the back just after 7 p.m., police and sources said.
She was taken to Montefiore Hospital in critical condition, cops said.
No suspects have been identified at this time, according to police sources.
Police are canvassing the area for footage of the shooting.
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A driverless car sped away from a bewildered San Francisco police officer during a traffic stop, new video footage shows.
In a bizarre clip posted on April 1, police appear to stop a driverless car for driving at night without using headlights.
The vehicle, which is operated by General Motors subsidiary Cruise, initially pulls over to the side of the road. A police officer gets out of his cruiser, approaches the vehicle and realizes there’s no one in the drivers seat.
The tries to open the driver’s side door, finds that it’s locked and walks back toward his cruiser.
The Cruise vehicle then speeds away through an intersection, eliciting screams and laughter from bystanders. The vehicle comes to a stop on the next block.
“Are you serious?” a bystander says. “How does that happen?”
The police cruiser follows and two officers approach the vehicle before the video ends.
Despite the apparent chase, Cruise claims the artificial intelligence-powered vehicle behaved as intended.
“Our [car] yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the traffic stop, as intended,” the company wrote on Twitter. “An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued.”
“We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles, including a dedicated phone number for them to call in situations like this,” Cruise added.
Cruise referred The Post to its tweets when reached for comment on the incident, while the SFPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s not the first time San Franciscans have been baffled by the behavior of autonomous cars.
Last year, dozens of vehicles operated by Google subsidiary Waymo made headlines for continuously driving to a quiet dead-end street, making U-turns and then leaving.
“It’s literally every five minutes,” one resident told KPIX TV.
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The man who allegedly killed his upstate, New York girlfriend and left her body stuffed in the trunk of a car parked in Queens has been arrested in Florida, a source said on Sunday.
Kareem Flake was busted in the Sunshine State and a police source said he was being held at a correctional facility in Osceola since Friday. The NYPD has been looking to arrest Flake for the 2020 murder of Destini Smothers.
Smothers, from Troy, New York, was 26-years-old had two young children with Flake. She went missing in November 2020.
The mom’s body was discovered in March 2021 when Department of Sanitation workers towing a sedan in South Ozone Park popped the trunk and discovered her decomposing body inside.
Smothers died of a blunt impact to her head, with a skull fracture and brain injury, according to the city medical examiner’s office.
Flake was arrested in Kissimmee, Florida for domestic battery against a different woman and is being held at Osceola jail, according to the source. The NYPD is waiting to hear the results of the Florida charges brought against him before an extradition hearing is held.
It is currently unclear how long it will take to transfer Flake to New York and prosecute him for allegedly murdering Smothers.
The young mom was last seen leaving Bowlero bowling alley in November 2020, where she attended a birthday party with Flake, according to the missing person’s report filed at the time.
The couple got in a “heated argument” that night, the report says.
Her case received renewed attention in September 2021 as Gabby Petito’s gained worldwide prominence and a national conversation was sparked about “missing white woman syndrome” — the idea that posits disappearance cases involving people of color quickly fall off the national radar, while those of white women receive the bulk of the attention.
At the time, the media frenzy around Petito’s murder captivated the nation, and it had been almost a year since Smothers’ initial disappearance and an arrest had yet to be made in her murder.
Smother’s family was unable to be reached on Sunday.
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Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins died Saturday morning after getting hit by a car in South Florida, his agent told ESPN.
Haskins, 24, was reportedly training with other Steelers quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers when a vehicle struck him.
The former Ohio State standout had been in the NFL since 2019, first with Washington and then as a third-string quarterback with the Steelers. Haskins was drafted 15th overall in 2019 but struggled once given the starting job with Washington.
Prior to making the league, the New Jersey native led Ohio State to the Rose Bowl in 2018, beating Washington in Urban Meyer’s final game as head coach. Memorably, he came off the bench in 2017 when J.T. Barrett got hurt mid-game in Ann Arbor to lead the Buckeyes to a win over Michigan.
That seemed to set Haskins on a path to stardom, but upon reaching the NFL, Washington had issues with his work ethic and repeated COVID-19 violations. Late in the 2020 season, he was benched for Taylor Heinicke before being released.
The Steelers signed him in 2021, using him as the third-string QB behind Ben Roethlisberger and Mason Rudolph.
He did not play last season and was inactive for all but one game.
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Fiordaliza Marte, a Brooklyn assistant principal, has only one explanation for the twists of fate that led her to a car crash at an unfamiliar intersection where she wound up saving the life of another Brooklyn assistant principal.
“I think I was just meant to be there,” she told The Post.
Marte, 42, who works at PS 23 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is hailed as a hero in the community but has received little outside attention for her extraordinary actions.
After stopping at the accident at Metropolitan and Stewart avenues in East Williamsburg last Dec. 3, she performed CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a man slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious.
He was Melvin Martinez, 53, a beloved assistant principal at PS 257 in Williamsburg and baseball coach at the Grand Street Campus High School who won the first-ever honorary ESPY award for keeping his team motivated to practice and study during the pandemic.
A series of random shifts in her daily routine brought Marte to the intersection at the exact time Martinez urgently needed help.
That afternoon, a school staffer who lived in Glendale, near Marte’s home in Maspeth, asked the AP for a ride home. After dropping off her co-worker, Marte drove off, but soon realized her mistake. “I was heading back to work.”
She then turned back towards Queens. “It was a totally different way, not the way I usually get home.”
About 10 minutes away, she phoned her husband, “I’m almost there,” she told him. It was just before 6 p.m.
That’s when she stopped at Metropolitan and Stewart to make a left, and saw the two-car crash.
“I see these two teenagers come out of the car and they’re frantically screaming, putting their hands on their heads. I could tell they didn’t know what to do.”
Marte, thinking of her two young sons, made the turn, parked and got out of her car.
She looked at the driver. “The airbag was all over him. His body was not moving at all. I thought he had passed away.”
The teens — later revealed to be the driver’s sons — “were frantically going in and out of the car, touching his pulse, his neck,” crying, ‘He’s not responding!’” she said.
Marte called 911, then asked the boys the driver’s name.
“Melvin Martinez,” one said. She gasped – she knew Martinez as a fellow AP.
“At that point, I just got in the car. I forgot I was on the phone with 911. I put the phone down and started doing chest compressions and CPR,” she said.
Sitting behind the wheel, Martinez was not in the right position to administer CPR, but Marte had to do something quickly.
“I was on the passenger seat, giving him chest compressions from the side,” she recalled.
“I did mouth-to-mouth on him. I didn’t even think about COVID,” said Marte, whose husband was hospitalized with the virus for 19 days in March 2021.
It was the first time she ever used the CPR training she had received in the school as part of required safety protocols.
“Never in my lifetime did I think I would be placed in that situation,” she said.
Martinez suddenly showed signs of revival.
“He coughed. He opened his eyes. And his legs shook like you see in the training video,” Marte recalled.
“It’s Miss Marte, Melvin! It’s Miss Marte!” she told him.
One of Martinez’ sons was standing by the car door. “He was like, ‘Oh, he’s going to be good!’” Marte said. “I just hugged him: ‘He’s going to make it!’”
The car started smoking moments before the ambulance arrived. Medics worked on Martinez for a few minutes before taking him to Elmhurst Hospital’s trauma center.
Another blessing: Martinez’ wife, Lori, happens to work at PS 23 as an aide. So Marte called Lori to say she would take the teens to the hospital to meet up with her.
Martinez was hospitalized briefly, underwent physical therapy, and returned to work at PS 257.
Martinez declined to comment on the incident, calling it “a traumatic experience,” but in a statement to CSA News, the principals’ union newsletter, he expressed his gratitude.
“I would like to thank God for placing Assistant Principal Marte at the scene of our car accident. She performed CPR on me until EMS arrived. She saved my life. She is my family’s guardian angel. She stopped at the scene of the accident, not knowing that the two teenagers were our sons. She is the true definition of a good samaritan. I am forever grateful for what she did for me and my family. Thank you Ms. Marte.”
Marte finds it astounding that “so many things out of the ordinary” brought her to Martinez’ side.
“People know how horrible I am with directions,” she joked.
But Marcos Bausch, an assistant principal at Queens Metropolitan HS and close friend of Martinez, said Marte seemed steered by a higher power.
“We’re eternally grateful for her service – and for being there. Many people were driving by and not stopping to help,” Bausch said. “I feel like it was a God thing. This was not just a string of random events. This happened the way it was meant to happen.”
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At least 11 people were injured, including two critically, after a T-bone crash between two vehicles pushed one into a group of pedestrians standing in front of a food truck in Austin Friday night, officials said.
The “major collision” took place at around 8:18 p.m. at the intersection of Barton Springs Road and Sterzing Street where some food trucks had been set up, Austin-Travis County EMS Public Information Officer Christa Stedman told reporters at the scene.
The crash was a “T-bone type collision” that forced one of the vehicles “into a group of pedestrians that were near the food trucks,” Stedman said.
All of the 11 victims were adults, she said. Nine patients were taken to area hospitals and two others refused medical treatment or transport and walked away from the scene.
Two victims suffered potentially life-threatening injuries. Two others were seriously injured and five had non-life threatening injuries.
Three patients were transported to Dell Seton Medical Center and six were transported to South Austin Medical Center.
A spokesman for the Austin Police Department said both vehicles were occupied solely by their respective drivers.
Both drivers are cooperating with the investigation, cops said. One of the motorists was among those taken to the hospital.
It’s not clear whether or not the food truck was operating at the time of the collision, however police said that people were standing in front of the truck.
Cops could not immediately confirm what led to the incident, but said the investigation is ongoing.
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This mama bear couldn’t huff and puff and blow out a North Carolina family’s SUV window – but she finally managed to break through the windshield about six hours after getting stuck inside.
Ashely McGowin awoke early Thursday and noticed that her hazard lights were blinking when she let her dogs outside, WLOS reported.
“They started barking as if something was out in the yard,” McGowin told the news outlet.
She then noticed that a large black bear was inside her vehicle and took video of the strange sight.
“I captured a few moments after the mom [bear] punched through my front windshield,” McGowin said after watching the animal crawling through the window, climbing on top of the vehicle and running away with her cubs.
Her 10-year-old son Seth McGowin told WLOS that “it’s just surprising because that doesn’t happen every day.”
Ashely said she believes the bear may have gotten inside the vehicle after she left the door unlocked. High winds from a storm Wednesday night could have slammed the door shut.
“Bears are in our yard frequently, but they stay to themselves,” she said, adding that the animal may have been trapped inside for some six hours.
“It was very distressing for me to see the mama bear in distress and suffering inside my car,” Ashely told the outlet.
But Seth now has a perfect excuse for his teacher, saying the bear got hold of his school assignment.
“The bear, sadly, peed on the book I was reading at school and ate my homework,” he said.
As for the SUV, it was deemed a total loss by the family’s insurance company.
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A Brooklyn dad and his two kids barely escaped with their lives when they were struck by a vehicle that jumped a curb Wednesday — and the lucky father says the family managed to avoid serious injury only by “animal instinct.”
Marco Diaz, 48, said he and his sons August, 11, and Alex, 9, were heading to the No. 2 subway in Crown Heights just before 8 a.m. when the car plowed into them.
“Out of my peripheral vision I can see this car careening towards us,” Diaz told The Post exclusively on Wednesday.
“I had just enough time,” he said as he described trying to leap out of the way.
“Of course, all of this is sort of an animal instinct,” he added.
The vehicle had been traveling on Nostrand Avenue when the driver lost control and veered left at St. John Place, Diaz said.
“There was no squeal. There was no screeching brakes. It wasn’t like he had, like doughnutted or anything. It just was like this image of this car heading towards us and the only sound — that was like a true telltale sound — was when his tires hit the curb and he popped up over the curb. I looked to my right and realized, ‘Oh, this thing is literally coming at us,’” Diaz said.
August dove out of the way, and Diaz quickly scooped up Alex, whose face was at grill height, to get him out of the way.
“I basically had picked him up. And so I took the blunt of the car hit and he came out of my hands and ended on the hood of the car.”
The car jolted Diaz forward into the closed gate of the Two Saints bar on the corner.
“This would have been an end to Marco except that [the driver] hit the side of the gate like the barrier,” he said. “And so there was just enough space between my now indented gate and the front of his car so that I didn’t get hit again. My little guy rolled off the hood onto the ground. And then his car bounced backwards about four feet or so.”
At that point, Diaz said, he was able to crawl out, get away from the car and find Alex.
“I just wanted to crawl out and not be in front of this car,” he said. “So I crawled out, got my little guy.”
He gives credit to the strangers in the area who tended to the family without hesitation.
“Like a million people swarmed around us immediately and started helping us get situated and making sure no one got up,” he recalled.
His older son, whose face was injured when he hit the pavement after jumping out of the way, was able to get up and walk back to him.
The driver remained on the scene and was taken into custody. He was released after police found his blood alcohol level was zero, a police spokeswoman said.
“They looked at video and they saw that he tried to switch lanes to avoid an accident,” the spokeswoman said. “When he did that, he lost control and went up on the curb.”
Diaz said his stepson was nearby, saw the scene and came running. He then called his mom.
“She came running over frantically of course because she knew what was going on at that moment,” he said.
The family went to Methodist Hospital in ambulances and were examined for injuries.
Diaz said he’s on crutches because of a sprained ligament and the boys have various cuts and bruises, but he’s thankful they weren’t badly injured or worse.
“We miraculously came out of it fairly unscathed,” he said.
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An alleged drunk and unlicensed driver made quite a splash in Australia — crashing her car through a fence and diving into a backyard pool.
The 25-year-old woman got behind the wheel in Thornlie, a residential suburb of Perth, on Tuesday evening but didn’t get far before careening off the road, through a fence and into the pool, Perth Now reported.
As the car began to sink, two neighbors sprang into action, broke the window with a brick and pulled the woman out before it went under.
“I heard a big crash … we both came running here,” one of the men, identified as Ed, told 7NEWS. “She couldn’t open the inside door because of the water pressure, so I just got in the pool.”
The other neighbor, Adam, tried to calm the woman down as Ed smashed the window.
“Thirty seconds later the car was completely submerged. A minute either way, we probably would have had to try resuscitate her,” Ed told the outlet.
Denis Groombridge, a local tow truck driver, said the car had no door handles on the outside and that the handles inside did not work properly.
“One of the neighbors who lived across the road came out and had to smash the window and pull her out,” Groombridge told Perth Now.
“She is extremely lucky that guy came running across the road, otherwise she would have drowned. I don’t think she realizes how lucky she is,” he added.
Groombridge said the woman, who suffered only minor injuries, also did not have insurance.
“I told her I would do the job and keep the car as scrap so she took out all her personal stuff,” he said. “So I went for a swim and had to put the hooks on the car underneath while I was in the water and we pulled it out with the truck.”
The unidentified woman, who has been charged with drunk driving, admitted to 7NEWS that she was over the limit and said: “Just don’t do what I did. Don’t drink and drive.”
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Bugatti is concerned that the owner of the one of the few high-performance Chiron sports cars ever made needs to have some screws tightened.
The French luxury carmaker issued a safety recall for a single 2018 Chiron – notifying federal safety officials that “one of the screws that fastens the front frame support may be loose.”
A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration notice said the recall stemmed from concerns over the potentially loose screw. One of the supercar’s dealers plans to tighten the screws free of charge, according to the feds.
“A loose frame support may reduce the vehicle’s structural protection in a crash, increasing the risk of injury,” the NHTSA’s notice says.
The Bugatti Chiron is one of the most exclusive cars in the world – with only about 70 produced each year, according to the automaker’s website. The car sells for approximately $3 million.
A total of just 500 Chirons will be produced during the model’s run – and half were already sold by 2017.
Bloomberg was first to report on the extremely limited recall.
While a recall affecting a single vehicle may seem odd, it isn’t unprecedented. Lamborghini once recalled a 2021 Aventador SVJ Roadster due to a screw-related issue, according to the outlet. Jaguar Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz have also issued single-vehicle recalls.
Bugatti enthusiasts likely aren’t surprised by the latest recall. In late 2021, the NHTSA notified the public that all nine US-based owners of Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport vehicles to address concerns that the limited-edition car’s rear tires could develop dangerous cracks after 2,500 miles on the road.
In that recall, Bugatti dealers will replace the rear tires every 1,875 miles at no cost to the owner – at least until an improved version of the tire hits the market.
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