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Polk Deputies Recall Scene Of I-4 Wrecks

Photo courtesy of Polk County Sheriff's Office

The patrol cruiser of Polk Sheriff's Deputy Sheriff Carlton Turner. He was the first deputy on scene of the deadly I-4 pileup.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 14, 2008

BARTOW - Of all the personal stories that have emerged from the massive pileup in Polk County last week, perhaps none is more compelling that the one told by Deputy Paul Buoniconti, a Marine combat veteran who drew from his wartime experience to do what he thought was right.

Buoniconti drove into the dense fog and smoke just before dawn Wednesday after hearing Deputy Carlton Turner's call for help on the radio.

"I knew he [Turner] was involved in a wreck and I knew it was pretty bad," Buoniconti said. The fog and smoke from a nearby brush fire was as thick as he had ever seen.

"I couldn't see the push bumper on my vehicle," he said, "and that's three-and-a-half feet away."

He parked his patrol car and walked about a half-mile. What he came upon is something he will never forget.

A car was pinned under a tractor trailer, which was pinned by another semi and another vehicle, he said.

Inside the crushed car came a voice.

"He was trapped in his vehicle," Buoniconti said. "I couldn't see him. I could only hear him. He was coherent." The deputy said looking at the car, he didn't feel the man was going to survive the wreck.

"It was about as crushed as I've ever seen a car," he said.

He heard a cell phone ring inside the smashed up car.

The victim told the deputy he knew his wife was trying to call him, but that he couldn't move his arms.

"I called his wife back for him," Buoniconti said, using his own cell phone. Having served in Iraq, he said he empathized with the injured man. He wanted to give him the chance to talk with his wife.

Buoniconti put the speaker on and held the phone down as close as he could to the wreck. The wife and husband talked, he said. "He said, 'I love you,' and she said, 'I love you,' " the deputy said.

Buoniconti has no regrets about what he did. "It was just the right thing to do. I was glad I was there and glad I had a cell phone with me and glad the call went through."

Emergency crews worked for five hours to free the man from the wreckage. He likely will recover, Buoniconti said. The victim's name was not released. The deputy hasn't talked to the victim or his wife since, although he said he tried to call her this morning.

Buoniconti and Turner told their stories during a short news conference at the sheriff's operations center this afternoon. Turner said he went into the scene thinking he was just going to close off one lane of Interstate 4 to divert traffic from a single accident.

He came upon the first wreck right after entering the thick fog. He angled his car to keep other vehicles from hitting the wrecked car, he said. As he tried to get out, his patrol car was hit. The impact threw him back into the vehicle and spun it around, he said.

"And then, something else hit me again," he said. To his right, he saw a tractor trailer on fire.

He managed to get his car off the road and used it as a bunker for injured drivers, he said. "There was gas and oil all over the road," he said. Then, the thought hit him: "I'm going to need all the help I can get."

He couldn't see anything, but heard vehicle after vehicle slamming into each other.

People screamed for help, he said. Wrecks that he heard but couldn't see showered him with debris and shattered glass, he said. That's how close it was.

"A lot of people were disoriented," he said. "They were looking for family members. Some didn't know their names."

He teamed injured people up, he said. Placing incoherent people with people who knew what was going on. He told them all to find his car and stay by it. That may have saved dozens of lives. It was just an idea that came to him at the moment, he said, as he continued his search for injured people still in their vehicles.

"There were a lot of people screaming," he said. "A lot of people wanting help. I assisted as many as I could. I kept using the lines in the road to figure out where I was going and where I had been.
"I was trying to get to whoever yelled for help the loudest."

All the time, he heard vehicles crashing.

"I heard some hit their brakes, and some that didn't," he said.

He recalled one man whom he couldn't help. Four were killed in the wreck that damaged 70 vehicles and sent 38 people to the hospital. He didn't want to talk about the one he watched die, trapped inside a burning truck.

"It's a tough feeling," he said, "I can't describe it. It's a feeling like there is nothing I could do. Even with a full fire crew, still, there was nothing I could have done."

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