Auto Accident inside Altamonte Mall Dec. 12, 2006
The 19-year-old drivers intentions was to kill himself late Monday. Somehow, a car driven by this 19 year old male, smashed through an Altamonte Mall entrance, careened through a corridor normally busy with shoppers, then plummeted 20 feet onto the floor below.
"It was a really loud boom," said a women, who was working at Glamour Shots when she heard the crash and ran to see what had happened. She said that before she saw the car, "we thought it [the noise] was a mall gate closing."
The incident took place about 10:30 p.m., a half-hour after the mall had closed, Altamonte Springs police officer said.
The driver came in from the parking lot leading to the second level of the mall, smashing through the northwest general entrance, using the front of his car to nudge a planter out of the way, witnesses said. "This clearly was an intentional act," Altamonte Springs police officer said.
The car continued through the corridor, hitting an unoccupied Ero's Perfume kiosk before ramming the escalator leading to the lower level and dropping 20 feet to the ground floor, Altamonte Springs police officer said. The car then crashed into a support column and came to a stop. "Then he gunned it," Maze said.
The vehicle drove around the column and went through a short wall, crashing into the side of an escalator before landing on its side on the floor below.
The driver had to be extracted from the vehicle and was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center in serious condition. Police had not yet interviewed him early today about the crash.
