By JOSEPH KELLARD
John Winter, 51, of Inwood Avenue was struck outside the strip of stores on the 600 block of East Park, between Neptune and Roosevelt boulevards, at about 8:30 a.m., after the FedEx truck, headed west on East Park, “was observed by a witness traveling at a high rate of speed,” according to Lt. Bruce Meyer, a spokesman for the Long Beach Police Department.
“He somehow swerved into the vehicles parked curbside,” Meyer explained, “and in addition to doing some extensive damage to those vehicles, he struck and killed a pedestrian.”
Police detectives were still interviewing the driver on Tuesday night, and he had still not been identified as the Herald went to press the following day. He was injured in the incident, along with a woman, Bonnie Goetz of Lido Beach, who was seated in one of the parked cars the truck hit.
Goetz’s husband, Walter, owner of Kosher Delicatessen at 641 E. Park Ave., said on Wednesday that his wife was at home with head and neck injuries, and suffering from blurry vision. “She’s not 100 percent, that’s for sure,” he said.
Goetz said that at the time of the incident, his wife was sitting in the car and on her way to work as their son, Russell, 14, brought a sandwich out to her. “My son was about three steps away from the car, going back to the deli, and then it all happened,” he said. “He said the man died on impact.”
Goetz’s work van was parked on the street, and was also damaged.
“The scene was a mess -- it was a terrible, terrible scene,” said Meyer. Police cordoned off the block for about three hours to investigate the accident scene, Meyer said, and an accident reconstruction expert from the Nassau County Police Department was called in to help.
“You look at the cars, with one up on the sidewalk, and it may appear the accident occurred a certain way,” Meyer explained, “but very often when they do reconstruction, it turns out to have happened in a very different way.”
The speed limit on that stretch of the street is 35 mph, and a sign posted on a utility pole on the corner of East Park and Roosevelt Boulevard reads “Speed Zone Ahead.” A few yards west of the accident scene, before Neptune Boulevard, the speed limit drops to 25.
Meyer noted that there was no indication that the driver had used drugs or alcohol, and he would not comment on reports that he might have fallen asleep at the wheel. Meyer was unavailable for comment at press time on Wednesday morning to provide further details.
At the time of the incident, few of the businesses on the block were open. Frank Delucia, owner of East End Plaza, arrived at work at about 10:30. “The body was covered up directly in front of my store,” Delucia said.
Bonnie Leibstein, co-owner of Jewelry by Steven, said her husband, Steven, arrived at work just after the accident, and that he allowed police to look at his store surveillance video to see if they could glean anything about the accident from it.
“I saw shoes in the street,” said Dennis Guiney, a Roosevelt Boulevard resident, who took photographs of the scene. “So the impact off the truck knocked the man’s shoes off.”
The traffic fatality was the third in Long Beach in the past 12 months. Joseph Shannon, 76, of Florida died two days after he collided with a school bus while riding his bicycle at Monroe Boulevard and East Olive Street last July 28. And on May 15, Evan Potts, 22, of Oceanside drove over and killed Ian Sharrin, an engineer from Long Beach, at West Park Avenue and National Boulevard, in what police believe was a road rage incident.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
