A family is displaced from a Farmington Avenue apartment a day before Christmas Eve after a truck driver under the influence crashed into several buildings and cars in West Hartford following a Hartford hit-and-run.
Adam Puzon, 40, of Enfield, was fleeing the scene of a crash in Hartford when he slammed into the east side of 755 Farmington Avenue in a 2008 Hino flatbed, backed up, caused minor damage to two other buildings, hit the building again and ripped the front end off a parked 2009 Honda Accord just before 6 a.m. Tuesday, police said.
Fluid trailed from the truck as it fled and the right front tire fell off on Farmington Avenue.
Hartford police had alerted West Hartford law enforcement to be on the lookout for a truck that fled the scene of a crash. Puzon's truck hit a fire hydrant and two utility poles before West Hartford police received an emergency call at about 6 a.m. reporting a truck damaged multiple buildings, police said.
Then an American Medical Response paramedic spotted Puzon's truck headed south on Arnoldale Road and notified West Hartford police. Police saw a truck with a lot of front-end damage and a missing front right tire on Park Road and pursued it north on Trout Brook Drive until Puzon pulled into the entrance driveway at Kingswood-Oxford.
Puzon also ran two red lights.
Police arrested him on multiple charges including driving under the influence and several other motor vehicle violations. Puzon was cooperative with police from there on out.
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Puzon was driving his work vehicle, owned by Advance Scaffold Services in Hartford, but it's unclear where he was headed.
Sheila Bezrucik woke up to the sound of the flatbed truck smashing into her Farmington Avenue apartment, caving in the brick veneer and rendering her home uninhabitable. Now she's forced out a day before Christmas Eve and her property managers are putting her up in another apartment for the time being during repairs on her unit.
"They have to take the whole structure, the whole wall down to repair everything. The windows, the heating, and everything. They have to repair it so I can’t stay in there," Bezrucik said.
This all unfolded as the truck driver for a scaffolding company in Hartford tried to turn around after driving in the wrong direction on a one-way driveway at the apartment complex.
"The whole building shook and then he backed up again and hit it again," Bezrucik said.
The interior walls of another apartment were also cracked.
Another resident, Matt Horan, looked out his window and saw a 40-foot flatbed truck "take out" a red Honda Accord and hit a building.
"The driver took a right and peeled down Arnoldale and was gone," Horan said.
Catherine Gay, who lives on the third floor of one of the buildings hit woke up to her pictures crashing down from the walls.
"I just looked out the window and saw him crashing into the next building, and then trying to turn the corner, unable to and crashed into a car and just demolished it," she said.
Police said Puzon fled the scene, but police stopped him at the entrance to Kingswood Oxford on Trout Brook Drive and arrested him. Fire and police responded and an investigation is underway.
No one was injured.
Puzon was also charged with two counts of failure to obey a control signal, failure to drive right, two counts of failure to maintain a lane,reckless driving, six counts of evading responsibility, failure to yield to emergency vehicles, four counts of first-degree criminal mischief and two counts of fourth-degree criminal mischief.
Police posted a $50,000 bond and was released. He has not yet appeared in court.
