Bronx Zoo Crash: Van Plunges Off Bronx River Parkway, Killing 7

Photo: Louis Lanzano / AP

NEW YORK — An out-of-control SUV barreled across several lanes of traffic on a highway overpass Sunday, then plunged more than 50 feet off the side of the road and landed in a ravine on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo, killing all seven people aboard, including three children, authorities said.


The 2004 Honda Pilot apparently flipped over a 4-foot-high iron fence before landing upside-down on the property of the nation's largest city zoo. The cause of the crash was unclear, and police haven't yet said how fast the SUV was traveling. A city official said the guardrail's height would be one of the safety issues investigated.

Police identified the dead adults as Jacob Nunez, 85, and Ana Julia Martinez, 81, both from the Dominican Republic, and their daughters, Maria Gonzalez, 45, and Maria Nunez, 39, and three grandchildren. Police say Gonzalez was driving.

The children were identified as Jocelyn Gonzalez, 10, the daughter of the driver, Niely Rosario, 7, and Marly Rosario, 3, both daughters of Nunez.

The SUV was headed south on the Bronx River Parkway that cuts through a working-class neighborhood when it bounced off the median, crossed three southbound lanes and hit the curb, causing the vehicle to become airborne, continue over the guardrail and plunge 59 feet, police said.

"Obviously, the vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed," FDNY deputy Chief Ronald Werner said. "It hit something that caused it to become airborne."

The SUV landed in a wooded area on the edge of zoo property that's closed to the public and far from any animal exhibits, zoo spokeswoman Mary Dixon said. The vehicle lay mangled hours later, its right doors ripped off and strewn amid the trees along with items from the car. Next to the heavily wooded area are subway tracks and a train yard.

" I've been in the fire department 30 years," Werner said. "Sometimes you come upon events that are horrific and this is one of them."

It's not clear what caused the SUV to go out of control around 12:30 p.m. The southbound side of the highway was closed briefly Sunday afternoon while police investigated but later reopened.

The medical examiner's office said it expected to release the victims' causes of death on Monday.

The accident was the second in the past year where a car fell off the same stretch of the Bronx River Parkway. Last June, the driver of an SUV heading north lost control and the SUV hit a divider, bounced through two lanes of traffic and fell 20 feet over a guardrail, landing on a pickup truck in a parking lot. The two people in the SUV were injured.

City agencies will be asked to look at safety issues on the highway including guardrail height, Bronx borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said in a statement Sunday.

"My prayers, as well as those of my office and all Bronxites, go out to the families of the seven victims," he said.

The wreck was the deadliest in New York City since the driver of a tour bus returning from a Connecticut casino in March 2011 lost control and slammed into a pole that sheared the bus nearly end to end, killing 14 passengers.

In 2009, just north of New York City in suburban Westchester County, a woman carrying a vanload of children drove nearly two miles in the wrong direction on a highway before colliding with an SUV. Eight people were killed, including four children. An autopsy determined that the woman, Diane Schuler, had downed at least 10 drinks and had smoked marijuana as recently as 15 minutes before the wreck.

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Obama mocks scandals, Republicans at White House Correspondents Dinner

At a time when the Obama administration is reeling from a pair of high-profile scandals, the president paused Saturday night to thoroughly mock them before a crowd of dressed-up journalists and celebrities at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Few topics were off limits as President Obama roasted his own administration officials, while reserving a stinging string of punch-lines for targets ranging from Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich to Donald Trump. His closing line poked fun at the Secret Service, which for weeks has been embroiled in a prostitution scandal after agents were found carousing with women in Colombia ahead of the president's visit.

"I had a lot more material prepared, but I have to get the Secret Service home in time for their new curfew," Obama said, referencing the agency's new rules of conduct. The president also ripped the General Services Administration, over the agency's now infamous 2010 conference in Las Vegas. "I mean, look at this party.  We've got men in tuxes, women in gowns, fine wine, first-class entertainment," he said. "I was just relieved to learn this was not a GSA conference."

The dinner was far from a campaign-free zone. The president pointed out his similarities with the presumed Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. "We both think of our wives as our better halves, and the American people agree to an insulting extent," the president said. "We both have degrees from Harvard. I have one, he has two. What a snob."

The crack drew a thumbs up from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who was in the audience. Santorum dropped out of the presidential primary campaign earlier this month. He had called Obama a snob for encouraging young Americans to attend college. Obama also teased Newt Gingrich, who is expected to formally drop out of the Republican presidential race this coming week. "Now, I know at this point many of you are expecting me to go after my likely opponent, Newt Gingrich," Obama said. "Newt, there's still time, man."

The president turned to make fun of recent stories about his childhood experience eating dog -- which he wrote about in his memoir. "Even Sarah Palin is getting back into the game, guest hosting on The Today Show -- which reminds me of an old saying: What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?  A pit bull is delicious," Obama said, adding: "A little soy sauce."
He later joked: "My stepfather always told me, it's a boy-eat-dog world out there."

Even the entrance to his speech was part of his schtick. The president walked off stage just before he took the podium with an alleged "hot mic," making fun of getting caught last month on an open microphone with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "What am I doing here," he asks off stage. "I'm opening for Jimmy Kimmel and telling knock-knock jokes to Kim Kardashian."

Once on stage, the president revisited last year's dinner, which took place as Navy SEALS were dispatched to capture and kill Usama bin Laden. "Last year at this time, this very weekend, we finally delivered justice to one of the world's most notorious individuals," Obama said. Then a picture of real estate mogul Donald Trump appeared on the room's television monitors. The president last year delivered a scathing roast of Trump, who flirted with running for the Republican nomination and claimed he had solved the "mystery" of Obama's birth certificate.

Obama also took a shot at the Republican congressional leadership, whom he thanked "for taking time from their exhausting schedule of not passing any laws" to attend the dinner.

Four years ago, Obama recalled, he was locked in a tough primary fight with Hillary Rodham Clinton, now his secretary of state. "She can't stop drunk texting me from Cartagena," he said, referring to their recent trip to the Summit of the Americas in Colombia, where Clinton was photographed drinking a beer and dancing. But Obama touched on serious themes as well, remembering The New York Times' Anthony Shadid and Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times of London who died while covering the uprising in Syria. "Never forget that our country depends on you to help protect our freedom, our democracy and our way of life," Obama said.

Then he returned to the lighter side: "I have to get the Secret Service home in time for their new curfew."
Jimmy Kimmel, the night's featured entertainer, picked up on the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Colombia, saying he told the Secret Service that for $800 he wouldn't joke about them, "but they only offered 30."
"If this had happened on President Clinton's watch, you can damn well bet those Secret Service agents would have been disciplined with a very serious high five," Kimmel said.

Kimmel later asked Obama: "You remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow? That was hilarious." "There's a term for guys like President Obama," Kimmel said with a pause. "Probably not two terms."

Among the eclectic crowd attending Saturday night's dinner were former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the cast of the hit TV show "Modern Family," actress Lindsey Lohan, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., actor George Clooney and director Steven Spielberg. Proceeds from the dinner go toward scholarships for aspiring journalists and awards for distinction in the profession.

The association was formed in 1914 as a liaison between the press and the president. Every president since Calvin Coolidge has attended the dinner.

Several journalists were also honored at the dinner:

-- Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley of The Associated Press, for winning the Edgar A. Poe Award for their stories about the New York City Police Department's widespread surveillance of Muslims after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It's the fourth major prize for the series, which has also won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a George Polk Award.

-- ABC's Jake Tapper and Politico's Glenn Thrush, Carrie Budoff Brown, Manu Raju and John Bresnahan, for winning the Merriman Smith Award for excellence in presidential coverage under pressure. Tapper won in the broadcast category for breaking the news that rating agency Standard & Poor's was on the verge of downgrading the federal government's triple-A credit rating because of concerns over political gridlock in Washington. In the print category, Thrush, Budoff Brown, Raju and Bresnahan of Politico won for their report on the deal between Obama and congressional Republicans to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.

-- Scott Wilson, of The Washington Post, for winning the Aldo Beckman award. Wilson was recognized for his "deeply reported and nuanced stories, his evocative writing and his clear presentation of complex issues, particularly on the foreign policy front."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


Article Source : http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/28/obama-to-speak-at-white-house-correspondents-dinner/?test=latestnews

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Space shuttle Enterprise woos crowds with flight over northern N.J., New York City

NEW YORK — In a city understandably wary of low-flying aircraft, New Yorkers and tourists alike watched with joy and excitement Friday as space shuttle Enterprise sailed over the skyline on its final flight before it becomes a museum piece.

Ten years after 9/11, people gathered on rooftops and the banks of the Hudson River to marvel at the sight of the spacecraft riding piggyback on a modified jumbo jet that flew over the Statue of Liberty and past the skyscrapers along Manhattan's West Side. Earlier in the day, people gathered along the water in Jersey City and stared from windows in Newark as the shuttle flew over northern New Jersey.

"It made me feel empowered. I'm going to start crying," Jennifer Patton, a tourist from Canton, Ohio, said after the plane passed over the cheering crowd on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, the floating air-and-space museum that will be the shuttle's permanent home. "I just feel like to have a plane fly that low over the Hudson, right past New York City, and to have everyone cheering and excited about it, shows that we don't have fear, that we have a sense of 'This is ours.'"

Onlookers bundled up on the blustery spring day along the piers on the West Side, cameras slung around their necks. The roar of the aircraft could barely be heard over the howling winds. In truth, the camera angles on TV made it seem as if the shuttle was a lot closer to the buildings than it really was.

The low-altitude flight was well-publicized, and few people were caught off-guard. Not one person called 911 to report a low-flying plane, police said. That's a striking contrast to what happened in 2009 when the Pentagon conducted a photo-op flyover in lower Manhattan by a passenger jet and F-16 fighter. The sight of the aircraft flying past the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan's financial district set off a flood of 911 calls and sent office workers rushing into the streets in panic.

On Friday, the jet carrying the shuttle turned east and flew over central Long Island. Nassau County office workers looked out their windows in delight as it passed over the Roosevelt Field Mall, near the spot where Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris in 1927.

The shuttle then touched down at Kennedy Airport, where a controller radioed: "Welcome to New York, and thanks for the show." The shuttle will be taken to the Intrepid by barge in June and is scheduled to open to the public in mid-July. Enterprise never went on an actual space mission; it was a full-scale test vehicle used for flights in the atmosphere and experiments on the ground.

It comes to New York as part of NASA's decision to end the shuttle program after 30 years. Space shuttle Discovery flew over the nation's capital last week and will end up at the Smithsonian. Endeavor is going to Los Angeles, and Atlantis is staying at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.


Article Source : http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/04/space_shuttle_enterprise_woos.html

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