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Firefighter Slammed Into Hawthorne Ambulance Accidentally, Police Say

UPDATE: No summonses were considered necessary after a volunteer firefighter headed to an alarm broadsided a Hawthorne ambulance with three squad members inside, knocking it over, police said Friday following the conclusion of an investigation.

The Hawthorne ambulance landed on the passenger side.

The Hawthorne ambulance landed on the passenger side.

Photo Credit: Michael Jannicelli for DAILY VOICE

The ambulance had its lights and siren activated as it traveled north on Goffle Road to a medical emergency just after 11 p.m. last Friday, the police report says. No patients were aboard.

A 25-year-old lieutenant firefighter, meanwhile, was headed east on the Lafayette Avenue extension to a firehouse in his personal vehicle, his volunteer blue light activated, when it struck the rig on the driver’s side, the report says.

The ambulance roof hit a utility pole before the rig finally came to rest on its side.

The lieutenant's vehicle, meanwhile, bounced off and hit a traffic light stanchion on the southwest corner of the intersection, the report says.

Both vehicles had obstructed views created by a brick well house, shrubs and a six-foot private fence on the southwest corner, Officer James Hayes wrote in his report (see chart above).

Many have called it a blind corner.

Neither the two female nor one male ambulance workers appeared injured but were taken to the hospital as a precaution, Hayes wrote. So was the firefighter, who sustained a shoulder injury.

The officer's report includes an account provided by a Wyckoff man who witnessed the crash.

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