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Collision That Closed Intersection Led To Heroics In St. Pete

News Channel 8 Photo by ERIC HAUSMANN

Investigators collect evidence after a fiery crash in St. Petersburg.

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TBO.com

Published: September 4, 2008

Updated: 09/04/2008 03:43 pm

ST. PETERSBURG - The way Ray Ott tells it, time stopped for him just before 5 a.m. today when he saw a Chevrolet Cobalt crash into a tractor-trailer.

The truck and car then lurched toward him, and that's when the professional poker dealer had time to wonder what his chances were.

Later he would be grateful the Cobalt struck a wheel well of the tractor-trailer, causing the truck to buckle a bit and slow, giving Ott time to veer his car to the right and out of the way of the jumbled metallic mess that was coming his way.

Once the wreckage came to a stop, Ott said, he noticed the Cobalt was burning and that an arm was hanging out a window. Then, Ott said, there didn't seem to be enough time.

He said he dropped his cell phone – he had been dialing 911 --- and ran to the car. The door handle was hot, and the door itself seemed jammed, he said. Someone else was trying to help, but Ott doesn't know who. Ott backed up, approached again, reached in and pulled a man out of the car through a window.

That man, Chad Anthony Petrucelli, 26, of Clearwater, was treated at Bayfront Medical Center but not admitted.

By the time Ott had pulled Petrucelli from the car, eight to 10 St. Petersburg Police Department cruisers were there and officers were using their fire extinguishers. They couldn't douse the fire, so they dragged the driver out of the car through a window, Ott said.

Police were chasing the Cobalt when it ran the light at 38th Avenue North and 16th Street and crashed.

The driver, Robert Bryant, 23, of St. Petersburg, was taken to Bayfront Medical Center and was in critical condition. No charges have been brought and the investigation continues.

"Funny, you have time to think," Ott said in a telephone conversation from work at Derby Lane this afternoon. "But when it has to do with a human life, you really don't have time to think too much.

"I think there's something in us that makes us do whatever is necessary," Ott said.

The driver of the tractor-trailer, Benjamin Floyd, 41, of Clearwater, was not injured.

The Cobalt, which is not registered to Bryant, first was noticed by police early today in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven convenience store, according to a written statement from Mike Jockers, a traffic homicide investigator.

Bryant drove the Cobalt toward a squad car, and the officer had to back up the cruiser, Jockers said. The officer then motioned for Bryant to put the vehicle in park, but Bryant drove off, and the officer followed him, reporting by radio he was going to attempt to stop the car, Jockers said.

That was in the 2900 block of 16th Street North. Before he reached a point five blocks north of the convenience store – the 34th Avenue intersection -- the officer noticed the Cobalt was fleeing, notified his supervisors by radio and turned on his lights and siren, Jockers said.

The car was still in the officer's sights when it ran the red light at 38th Avenue and crashed into the tractor-trailer, Jockers said.

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