Police: Added plastic floor mat caused Toyota crash

The driver of a Toyota Camry involved in a chain-reaction crash Monday night told police a faulty gas pedal caused her to lose control and ram into the vehicle in front of her.

But investigators have determined this afternoon that the Camry's gas pedal works properly and that it got stuck on a hard plastic mat laid over the car's factory floor mat.

The owner of the 2007 Camry, Tuan Minh Tran of St. Petersburg, told police that the car is included in Toyota's recall of more than 4.2 million vehicles with flawed pedals.

A module on the Camry's gas pedal does not match the serial numbers of faulty pedals, investigators say.

Instead, the hard plastic mat - the kind used with office desks and chairs - had been pushed up against the gas pedal, investigators say. When the car's driver Hoai Luong, 54, accelerated, the pedal got snagged on the mat, investigators say. The brakes on the Camry also worked properly, police say.

Investigators give this account of what happened about 8:30 p.m. Monday:

Luong was driving the Camry north on 34th Street and approached Central Avenue when the accelerator pedal got stuck. The car accelerated out of control and crashed into the rear of a 1985 Chrysler sedan driven by Luis Anaya-Munoz, 54, of Largo.

The impact caused Munoz to strike the car in front of him while Luong's Camry flipped, slid on its roof through the intersection and crashed into a Nissan sedan driving south.

Some of the other drivers and their passengers were taken to local hospitals with injuries that were not life-threatening, St. Petersburg police spokesman Bill Proffitt said.

The sales of eight Toyota models were suspended when the recall went into effect last week.

Camry, RAV4, Corolla and Highlander vehicles with vehicle identification numbers that begin with "J" are not affected by the recall, according to a Toyota news release.

Police said that the Camry driven by Luong has an identification number that starts with a different letter.

Tran said he had taken the 2007 Camry to a dealership Sunday to have the pedal inspected.