Wrong-Way Car Wreaks Comm Ave Chaos
Eight cars hit near Kenmore Square, student injured
A speeding maroon Mitsubishi SUV raced the wrong way up Commonwealth Avenue from Kenmore Square early Thursday afternoon, sideswiping at least eight cars and colliding with two more before the driver stopped and fled on foot. Marouk Onifade, one of those whose car was sideswiped, chased down the suspect and held him until police arrived to take him into custody.
“I didn’t hold him long,” says Onifade, a native of Benin, West Africa, who works in real estate in Boston. “The police were already very nearby.” Onifade downplayed assertions that his actions were heroic.
Boston Police were called at 12:41 p.m. and closed the inbound lane ofCommonweath Avenue from St. Mary’s Street to Kenmore Square for morethan an hour while tow trucks removed the damaged cars.
Arrested at the scene was 29-year-old Ahmed Yerow of Chelsea. Accordingto Boston Police spokesman Dave Estrada, Yerow was charged with assaultand battery by means of a dangerous weapon, leaving the scene of anaccident with personal injury, leaving the scene of an accident withproperty damage, operating to endanger, and driving the wrong way on aone-way street.
Yerow, who was hospitalized with a broken jaw Thursday night, is expected to be arraigned Friday in Roxbury District Court.
BU officials say a School of Management student who was driving one of the cars that was hit was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries, and Brian Jorgensen, a College of Arts & Sciences professor emeritus of English, who was driving another sideswiped car, was uninjured. BU spokesperson Colin Riley says the Mitsubishi SUV was reported to be traveling up to 50 miles an hour.
Jorgensen was heading towards Boston on Commonwealth Avenue near the intersection of Blandford Street when his car was struck. “All of a sudden,” he says, “the car in front of me starts coming towards me and turning sideways because he was hit by a car coming up Comm Ave the wrong way.”
Jorgensen stopped his car, he says, and was immediately sideswiped on the right side of his car.
“I had nowhere to go,” he says. “There was no way to turn right, and I couldn’t turn left because of the T fence.”
Jorgensen recalls getting out of his car to “a lot of smoke, bent metal, and the sound of a blaring car horn.”
David Ananian, a BU groundsworker, heard a loud crash and ran to the scene, worried that a BU student might have been hit. Ananian says he watched as the Mitsubishi raced up the street, bouncing off other cars. “He was just plowing through,” he says. “It looked like he was running from something. He finally stopped when he hit a car in the intersection, then he got out and started running.”
“I’m surprised no one got hit,” Ananian says. “Those crosswalks are usually full of people, and no one ever looks.”
Brittany Rehmer (COM’11) contributed to this article.
Art Jahnke can be reached at jahnke@bu.edu.
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