A city crew in the town of Huntington in West Virginia inadvertently crushed the Fiat 500 of a local student after cutting down a tree – and the reaction of a local to the accident quickly went viral.
WSAZ 3 reports that residents had made repeated requests to have the tree next to Central City Elementary School along Washington Avenue removed. A few weeks ago, one of its limb was blown off during a storm and landed on the windshield of a nearby car.
The local government gave the go-ahead for the tree to be removed once and for all last week, but when they did, it ended up crushing the rear half of a Fiat 500 owned by a Marshall University student.
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Local resident Billy Tatum was playing cards on his porch as the workers were cutting down the tree and witnessed the entire thing.
“It sounded like a beer can getting flattened,” Tatum said. “It just was ‘crunch.’ I hate to say it, but it was kind of cool, you know? What guy doesn’t like destruction? That’s why we go to demolition derbies, but hey, the bottom line is that’s that poor girl’s new car, and she can’t get to school now.”
“It flattened it like a pancake from the back seat to the tail”, he added, “and I said, ‘Oh, whoops.’ I know things happen but some stuff is avoidable. Chalk it up to a Monday.”
A spokesperson from the city says the employees involved were negligent and didn’t follow protocol. The city says it is committed to resolving the issue and have provided a rental car for the student while the insurance claim is being made.
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