Suncoast Pinellas News
Driver Sought After Truck Hits Palm Harbor Apartment
News Channel 8 cell phone photo by RUGENE MOORE.
A pickup truck plowed into a Palm Harbor apartment Tuesday morning, scaring the man sleeping inside.
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Published: May 6, 2008
Updated: 05/06/2008 03:22 pm
PALM HARBOR - Peter Caruana was sleeping early today when his girlfriend woke him up. She had heard a screech, looked out their second-story window and saw a pickup truck strike their apartment building down below, he said.
Caruana looked out the window, too, and saw two men running off, he said. With his head pressed against the window screen, he said he yelled, "Hey get back here."
One of the two men stopped. "I'm not going anywhere,'' the man said.
"You better stay there," Caruana, 49, remembered replying. "You better not move."
The other man, however – whom the Florida Highway Patrol has determined was the driver of the 2008 Nissan truck – kept running, Caruana said.
The driver of the Nissan had been heading north on Kristen Boulevard, just north of Tampa Road, when he lost control and struck the apartment building at Providence at Palm Harbor, 155 Kristen Court, at 12:37 a.m., the patrol said.
No one was injured.
"I don't know if my yelling made him stop or he decided 'I'm not going anywhere,'" Caruana, who works in the advertising department of the Tampa Tribune, said of the pickup truck passenger. Caruana said the man stayed until authorities arrived and questioned him.
Caruana said five families were evacuated from the building. The man whose apartment was struck did not talk to the media, but he was overheard saying, "I can't hit the lottery, but my apartment got hit by a truck," Caruana said.
It was unclear when the displaced apartment dwellers would be able to return to their apartments. A woman answering the telephone at Providence at Palm Harbor declined comment, and a call placed to the spokeswoman for Palm Harbor Fire Rescue was not returned.
Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.
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