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Motorist careens backward across Overbrook street

Thursday, April 17, 2003

By Cindi Lash, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Only a couple of skinny, swaying trees were keeping Stephen Sawczak's Ford from rolling over a hill and plunging to a parking lot 20 feet below, but Sawczak wasn't much perturbed when police and paramedics crept up to his dangling car.

	Members of a towing crew secure a Ford Taurus suspended in the trees near Frank & Shirley's Restaurant above Saw Mill Run Boulevard in Overbrook yesterday. Driver Stephen Sawczak, 81, of Whitehall, was backing out of the Overbrook Senior Center parking lot when the car shot out of the lot, across Dartmore Street and down the hillside. Police and paramedics freed him. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

"Can you help me out?" he called to Patrolman Regis Lattner. "I think I'm stuck."

Stuck he was, after his car shot backward out of a parking lot, across a street and into the line of trees along the side of hilly Dartmore Street in Overbrook. Some of those trees bent but did not break, holding Sawczak's car at a precarious angle but preventing it from crashing on the concrete below.

Sawczak, 81, of Whitehall, told rescuers that he'd gotten stuck in the trees after he left an Easter luncheon and party at the Overbrook Senior Center, on the other side of Dartmore Street. He told them he believed the accelerator on his gray Ford Taurus stuck just after he shifted into reverse and attempted to back out of the senior center's parking lot.

The car hurtled backward out of the parking lot, crossed Dartmore Street and slammed into the trees, its back end hanging over the hill above the parking lot behind Frank & Shirley's Restaurant at 2209 Saw Mill Run Blvd. Other partygoers at the senior center said they didn't see what happened but ran outside when they heard the crash.

"I went over there and [Sawczak] said he was OK, but his heart was beating kind of fast," said Mark Accamando of Overbrook. "I could see why."

Police and paramedics arrived moments later and, after checking with Sawczak to make sure he was not seriously hurt, told him not to move. Medics stabilized the car by tying it to an Emergency Medical Services rescue truck and a tow truck with cables and chains, then opened the driver's door and helped Sawczak step out.

Sawczak was not seriously hurt but was examined at Jefferson Hospital. He could not be reached later for comment.

Police, who towed Sawczak's car, said they could not immediately determine what caused the crash. They said the car would be examined for mechanical malfunctions.