Coughing fit led to PNC center crash
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Richard McGee turns himself in at city police headquarters Wednesday.
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A bomb squad was called, Downtown streets were cleared, traffic was stalled, buildings were emptied, an ambulance was dispatched -- all because of a coughing fit.
That was the explanation a North Side man gave police for why he crashed his girlfriend's SUV into the glass front doors of PNC's Firstside Center on First Avenue just before rush hour Tuesday afternoon, drawing a major police presence and scores of curious onlookers to the edge of Downtown.
Police said Richard McGee, 67, then ran from the wreckage, apparently because he was afraid he would be punished for driving without a license. Police planned to charge him with that and three other traffic citations -- careless driving, failure to furnish information at a crash scene and leaving the scene of an accident -- but released him from police headquarters Wednesday night. He went there alongside Allegheny County Sheriff William Mullen, whom he contacted for help surrendering, said Lt. Kevin Kraus of the city's major crimes division. Officers had pegged him as the wayward driver Tuesday night and went to his girlfriend's house in search of him.
Mr. McGee told police he had a key to his girlfriend's Hyundai Santa Fe and borrowed it without her knowledge, driving it away from its spot at the Parkway Center Mall in Green Tree with the hope that he would be able to return it before she noticed it was gone. Instead, he said, he had a coughing fit that caused him to lose control of the SUV and drive it up the steps and into the revolving doors of the sprawling Firstside Center.
"It was a medical condition that created the traffic crash," Lt. Kraus said. He had a short conversation with a woman who asked him if he was OK and then ran away.
"He was scared," the lieutenant said. Officers cleared and cordoned about a three-block stretch of Downtown, up to Ross Street and Fourth Avenue, for more than two hours. Confused pedestrians snapped photos and milled about, some of them temporarily separated from their cars or offices.
No one was hurt in the incident, but police said they took extra precaution because of its location and because law enforcement must take seriously any security threat, real or perceived.
Still, Lt. Kraus said, police found no evidence that the crash was linked to terrorism nor was it connected to the dwindling group of Occupy Pittsburgh protesters who were ordered Monday to leave their encampment outside BNY Mellon on Grant Street.
First Published February 9, 2012 12:00 am
