Steve Quayle News Alerts

Oct. 16, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK, — Evan Robinson was waiting to board the ferry when he saw it speeding toward Staten Island at a strange angle.

"I thought maybe he was avoiding some other boat. I saw he was heading right to the pier," said Robinson, 43. "I said, oh my God, he's going to crash into that pier."

"There was a lady without legs, right in the middle of the boat." FRANK CORCHADO, Witness
“IT DIDN’T EVEN sound that loud when it hit. It was strange.”
But inside, there were screams and the sickening crunch of metal gored by concrete. Passengers fell over each other in the flight to avoid being impaled as shards of window and splintered planks flew.

“There was a lady without legs, right in the middle of the boat,” said Frank Corchado, an elevator mechanic who had been sleeping when the ferry crashed Wednesday, killing 10 people and injuring at least 42. “She was screaming. You ever see anything like that?”

Bob Carroll, who had left work early to watch the Yankees game, said that after impact he looked to the right “and the whole side of the boat starts to disappear.”

At least 10 people dead in ferry crash

“Everybody on my side started running, including me,” said Carroll, 52, a lawyer at New York State Supreme Court. “At one point someone fell, I fell on top of them and someone fell on top of me.”

Corchado, who lives in the St. George section of Staten Island, said he tried to help as many people as possible get out. Witnesses said some jumped into the 62-degree water and others ran as the pier chewed up the side of the boat.

Destruction to the interior of the Staten Island Ferry boat, Andrew J. Barberi, which was involved in a fatal accident at the terminal in Staten Island, N.Y., Wednesday, Oct. 15.

ELDERLY VICTIMS

"We thought there was an explosion, or maybe a terrorist attack." — FRANK JOHNSON, Witness

“Most of the people who died were older people, I believe, who couldn’t move or didn’t have enough time to get out of the way,” Corchado said.

He came to St. Vincent’s Hospital Wednesday night to check on a man he only knew as “Paul,” who he said he helped leave the boat.

“Paul was very bad, very bad,” Corchado said. “Internal injuries, I believe. His leg was broken.”

“There was another gentleman. By the time we got him out of the boat, he was dead,” said Corchado, who recalled passing six dead bodies, included one that had been decapitated.

Frank Johnson, 38, who attends the College of Staten Island, was on the top level of the boat on his way to class when the boat struck.

“We thought there was an explosion, or maybe a terrorist attack,” he said. “When we looked through the windows, we saw a whole section of the concrete pier was broken. We thought it was like the Titanic where water would rush in.”

Family members waited for word on their loved ones at two hospitals and at an American Red Cross family assistance center in the area.

Gabriel Fequiere came looking for his mother, 83-year-old Clelie Fequiere. Fequiere went to Manhattan at 9 a.m. Wednesday to do volunteer work as a caretaker and hadn’t called, he said.

“I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” her son said, walking pensively down the street. “I’m worried sick. It’s my mom.”

http://www.msnbc.com/news/981035.asp?0cv=CA01