Tragedy strikes as parishioners leave a church service in Linden, New Jersey. A driver loses control of his car and plows into a crowd of people.
One woman died after being struck by that runaway car outside church services despite fellow churchgoers best efforts to save her. In all, there were nine people injured and they are recovering at various hospitals around New Jersey.
Sixty-six year old Gina Carosick was one of two women pinned under the car's wheels when they finally came to a stop at the Ten Commandments monument. Parishioners at St. Teresa's church in Linden had just begun to file out of the sanctuary after a first communion service and that is when the mayhem began. A station wagon driven by a 72-year-old church usher careened in reverse towards a crowd of children, hitting a nine-year-old girl as she was pushing her two-month old brother in a stroller. It also struck two other boys.
Police say the driver then panicked and put the car in drive and sped forward another 80 feet, hitting five more people and finally pinning two women against the stone monument.
Sylvia Wojtaszek, Parishioner: "People were screaming and crying really, really bad. Young men were picking up the car because there was a lady underneath there."
There were two women pinned underneath the car and parishioners did lift the car off of them, but the situation looked so dire that the priest came running out of the church in order to administer last rites.
Again, one of those women, a sixty-six year old woman has died. A 54-year-old woman is in critical condition at University Hospital. The driver, 72-year-old Anthony Peconna is hospitalized with chest pains.
