Fire truck hits man it was sent to rescue tbo.com ^ | September 24, 2009
A St. Petersburg fire truck heading to a call of a bleeding man apparently ran over the man.
According to St. Petersburg Fire Rescue, the department received a call about 3:45 p.m. today about a "person bleeding’’ in the 400 block of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street South. That location is about a block from the fire station.
A fire truck headed out of the station’s garage bay and immediately hit a man lying on the driveway, the fire department reported. The man appears to be the same person referenced in the earlier call, according to St. Petersburg Fire Rescue.
Fire officials said the injured man was Ted Lenox, a 41-year-old homeless man who tends to frequent downtown St. Petersburg. Lenox had laid down in front of one of the station’s garage bay doors, and someone called 911 to report him.
When the fire station received the call, the firefighters got in the truck and hit Lenox on the way out of the garage bay. The truck’s undercarriage caught Lenox and tumbled him forward; the truck stopped when firefighters felt a bump as the rear wheels ran over him.
Lenox was taken to Bayfront Medical Center with what are described as life-threatening injuries.
I have a guy that has been trying to walk into my side-view mirror on a weekly basis for over 8 years. It’s second nature for me to dodge him now, sometimes I don’t even realize it until my partner screams that someone almost walked into us.
