Baby girl rescued alive from under car after suspected drink driver crashes into shop

Jul 26, 2021

Body camera video has captured the moment a baby girl was pulled alive from under a car which had been driven into a shop by a suspected drink driver.

Police officers and passers-by rushed to help the young child and her mother after they were hit by the vehicle on a street in Yonkers, around 20 miles (32km) north of New York City on Friday.

The girl, who is eight months old, NBC said, suffered a fractured skull, while the woman was left with a compound fracture of her leg.

The pair, who have not been named, were both taken to hospital where they were “doing extremely well”, police said.

The woman, 36, who had the child in her arms, was crossing the road when the blue vehicle turned into it from an adjoining street at speed, first hitting the pavement, before smashing into a parked car.

In the video, released by the Yonkers Police Department, the woman is seen trying to run away from the oncoming vehicle, reportedly a Hyundai Elantra, which hit her from behind.

She and her child were then driven into the front of a barbers on the bonnet of the car.

A chaotic scene, recorded on an officer’s body camera, followed, showing the smashed car in the middle of the barbers, surrounded by broken glass and people frantically trying to help the pair.

Police officers Rocco Fusco and Paul Samoyedny, who were having breakfast next door when they heard the crash, rushed to the barbers to investigate.

They found the mother sitting on a bed of glass by the mangled bonnet, covered in motor oil, with blood on her arm. The child, though, was not immediately fully visible.

“We got a baby under the vehicle!” officer Samoyedny said over his radio, according to the body camera video.

The girl can be heard crying, but the officers told CNN they could not hear the child’s cries.

Officer Fusco and the passers-by then lifted the car, allowing Samoyedny to grab the child, yelling “I got her, I got the baby, I got the baby… hold on, hold on… we got you, yes, yes”, as the girl, in a Mickey Mouse printed dress, is pulled clear.

Officer Fusco told CNN: “You really don’t think about it, you just have to do something.

“We couldn’t move the car to get it off this baby, so the only way to get her out was to try to lift it up.”

The driver, named by police as David Poncurak, a 43-year-old man from Yonkers, was arrested for driving while intoxicated, police said, and also faces a second charge of second degree vehicular assault.

Authorities said he did not have a driver’s licence and was still in custody on Sunday afternoon.

Police said they found an alcoholic drink in the car, while a woman, who was also in the vehicle, was uninjured.

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