A student and security guard grabbed two women out of a vehicle after it rear-ended a parked car and flipped on its side early Sunday morning on Walnut Place. 

The Department of Public Safety confirmed there was a car accident, but neither DPS nor the Syracuse Police Department could access the accident report Sunday. Several eyewitness accounts confirmed seeing the car on its side and paramedics transporting an unknown girl in an ambulance from the accident, which occurred between the Alpha Epsilon Pi and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity houses. 

Joseph Nehme, a member of SAE, walked outside the front door of the SAE house to get some air during a Halloween party and saw the vehicle hit the back of a parked car and flip, he said. He threw his costume boxing gloves off and ran with a security guard from SAE’s party to the vehicle, which had its driver’s side window open. The driver’s side was facing the air and the passenger’s side facing the ground when Nehme and the guard got there, Nehme said. 

‘I pushed him up, and he crawled into the window and grabbed the first girl out,’ Nehme said. 

It took between 30 and 45 seconds to remove the second girl in the passenger’s seat because she was so deep in the car, Nehme said. The girl who had been in the driver’s seat was telling Nehme and the guard to get her friend out, he said. Neither of the girls appeared to have blood on them, he said.

‘The girls were very delirious. They were crying,’ Nehme said. ‘It was pretty scary.’

The side windows of the vehicle were smashed, said Jonathan Hirsch, president of the fraternity AEPi. Hirsch saw the vehicle after the accident.

‘It was directly in the middle of the road, no one could get through that,’ said Hirsch, a senior biophysics major.

Hirsch said a Rural/Metro ambulance transported a girl to the hospital and that there were 10 to 15 DPS and SPD cars combined on the street. Hirsch walked outside the AEPi house and discovered the accident after a fraternity brother called and told him about it at 12:40 a.m., he said. Hirsch said he asked police if the accident involved his fraternity house, and they said no. 

There were papers and glass on the road amid the aftermath of the accident, he said.

‘It just took a while to clear all the debris,’ Hirsch said. 

Anna Pietrzak, a junior, was at a Halloween party in the SAE fraternity house during the accident and saw at least 10 people run out the front door onto the porch, she said.

‘I was inside, and I just heard someone literally yell, ‘Come outside, a car’s flipped over,” she said. 

By the time she walked outside, the ambulance was gone, but she saw the car sitting on its side, she said.

She said: ‘A lot of people were just standing outside watching it.’ 

mcboren@syr.edu

Published on October 31, 2010 at 12:00 pm