ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Tuesday morning started off with a bang for Imad Hadabah and his neighbors.
“It’s crazy,” he said, looking at his son’s bedroom and the large hole in the wall next to his bed. “I don’t know how to feel, honestly. I would have been really upset if something happened to my child.”
According to the people living on 85th Avenue North in St. Petersburg, the driver of a burgundy Nissan came speeding down the road just before 6:30 a.m. Domenic Capobianco and his daughter Riley were in their driveway about to leave.
“All I saw were sparks flying,” he said.
According to him, the car hit the dip in the road, then flew over the speed hump. It then hit the grey Hyundai parked in front of Capobianco’s house. The impact sent the Hyundai crashing into Hadabah’s house.
“That really scared me. Also, the fact that she was still standing outside of the car,” Capobianco said, looking at his daughter.
He said the driver got out of the car, screaming for him. He started to run over to help, but he said Pinellas County deputies told him to stay back.
At the time, neither he nor his daughter realized the car the driver hit was his stepdaughter Emilee Traina's car.
“Now that I'm actually looking back on it, something else could have happened, and it could have been a lot worse,” said Riley Capobianco.
As for her stepsister, she’s upset her car is probably totaled but glad no one was seriously hurt or killed.
“Seeing my car like that and seeing the damage it did was really scary,” said Traina. “I was thinking about if I was in there because if it had been an hour later, I would have been in my car leaving.”
The sheriff’s office said the crash has to do with a “significant narcotic investigation,” and they might release more information Wednesday.
