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Out-of-Control Taxi Smashes into Park Avenue Doctor's Office

By DNAinfo Staff on March 19, 2012 11:42am

By Serena Solomon, Ben Fractenberg and Wil Cruz

DNAinfo Staff

UPPER EAST SIDE — A taxi cab went out of control and slammed into the wall of a Park Avenue doctor's office Monday morning, officials said.

The cab was headed south about 11 a.m. when it collided with a westbound van on East 67th Street, officials and witnesses said. The taxi careened into a gastroenterologist's office at 650 Park Avenue.

"It sounded like an explosion," said Maryann Busareo, an office manager for Dr. Jerome D. Waye, the gastroenterologist. "I saw a mailbox flying through the air."

Busareo said a patient sitting in a waiting room had moved to a back room just before the accident.

"We had just taken a patient out a couple of minutes before," she said.

The FDNY said one woman — a passenger in the cab, witnesses said — suffered injuries to her face. She was taken to New York Hospital, an FDNY spokesman said.

"She was bloodied on the face," said Andrew Lunetti, 62, a service elevator operator who was just getting in to work.

The drivers of each of the vehicles blamed the other for the crash.

"I'm going down the street with a green light, and somebody hit me," the cab driver, Abedin Mohammed, 30, said. "I lost control."

But van driver Gordon Hudley, 58, said the cabbie came out of nowhere.

"I didn't see him until he hit me," he said. "It's a good thing no one was in the way."