In the absence of independent witnesses, and since no injuries were involved, indications were that no action will be taken against the driver or passenger. Police, however, have not shelved the case. “We are trying to determine who the driver is,” the spokesperson said. As Police Lt. Dean Williams explained the day before, in accidents without injuries or witnesses, the more common response is not to bring charges.
A shaken but uninjured Hispanic man and woman were in the front seat of the car when the mini-van came to a rest in front of
, according to David Gobbeo. Mr. Gobbeo lives in the apartment next door. He had just come home from his job a little after 6 on Saturday evening when the crash happened. He promptly reached for his videocamera and recorded much of the fallout from the crash. The mini-van, south-bound on
, seemed to whirl out of control after the driver turned west onto
. For reasons that are unknown, the car evidently slipped out of control, veered across Braddock and into the recently refurbished one-story building. Among other damage, the crash destroyed a set of three windows in the apartment and punched a hole in the front wall.
“I am certain my neighbor would have been killed if he had been home,” Mr. Gobbeo said. “His bed is right under the window. He is a night person, and he told me later he would have been sleeping at the time of the accident. That is scary.” Mr. Gobbeo, who lives alone, as does his neighbor, came home from Trader Jim’s popular store on Ssepulveda, anticipating an unruffled evening. “I had fired up my computer, and I was checking my emails,” he said. “At first I heard a terrible sound. I really thought something was going to come through the window. When I opened my front door, all I could see was radiator steam.”
Seeking Assurances
“I was out the door seconds after it happened,” said Mr. Gobbeo, who seems never to have lost his presence of mind. He headed for the front seat of the mini-van where he found a Hispanic man and woman sitting stunned. It was not clear whether the couple was comfortably conversant in English. “When I asked if they were all right,” Mr. Gobbeo said, “they kept saying Si,si.” The driver, according to Mr. Gobbeo, repeatedly told him, “I am sorry, I am sorry.”
Next he pursued the welfare of his neighbor. With the steaming mini-van blocking his view from the front, Mr. Gobbeo said he dashed to the rear of the property. He wanted to peer into his neighbor’s home. Quickly concluding the apartment was empty, the relieved Mr. Gobbeo went back to his home and picked up his favorite video camera. The Culver City Police Dept. arrived a few minutes after a 9-1-1 call, and that was when Mr. Gobbeo’s level of angst began to rise perceptibly. Having established that all persons were safe, Mr. Gobbeo became upset for a new reason. Watching the scene closely, he insisted that the driver told police he did not have a driver’s license. Worried that the driver would get away without a penalty, Mr. Gobbeo was furious that the Police Dept. did not bring any kind of charge against the driver.
Police Offer a Different Perspective
“What apparently happened after the accident was pretty routine,” Police Lt. Williams told thefrontpageonline.com. “Especially since there were no injuries, it would have been normal for the driver not to receive a citation at the scene. A ticket is solely up to the discretion of the officer whether to issue one.” Mr. Williams indicated the police officers who answered the call had not been specifically trained in accident investigation. He said that non-injury accidents have become so common in
As for the driver’s alleged lack of a driver’s license, Mr. Williams said that is not unusual, either. “I would say 30 percent of the people we stop either don’t have a license — maybe never have had one — or the driver doesn’t have his license on his person,” he said.
Postscript
With a sense of consternation, Mr. Gobbeo reported, and recorded on film, the nearly immediate presence of “an ambulance chaser or advisor” who counseled the shocked couple. According to Mr. Gobbeo’s recorded film, the mystery man drove his black car into the driveway beside Mr. Gobbeo’s house. There, he spoke with the presumably dazed couple. Mr. Gobbeo was struck by how quickly the person materialized, and said he was fretting that the driver “might get away” without a penlty. While Mr. Gobbeo worried that he may be forced to relocate while his building is repaired, the couple from the mini-van, he said, headed across the street to Taco Bell. “I am concerned,” the near-victim said, “because I only live a block from work now. What am I going to do? I don’t own a car.”