Vehicle Strikes Fuel Pump, Triggers Fire
By Jim Nolan, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Feb. 7–There’s unleaded. And then there’s lead-footed.
Both appeared to play a role in a frightening fire that erupted yesterday morning at a Richmond gas station when a gold Lincoln Town Car plowed into a fuel pump and drove off.
Richmond police last night were still searching for the driver who caused the 9 a.m. blaze at the Exxon station at 18th and East Broad streets in Shockoe Bottom. The small explosion and fire triggered by the collision caused a billowing cloud of black smoke to rise into an otherwise clear-blue winter sky.
A store surveillance video released by police shows a woman believed to be the driver, who appears to be in her 20s, tossing her shoulder-length braids to one side as she entered the station to pay for gas. Police spokeswoman Karla Peters said the woman bought her fuel, then purchased something else at the store and left to get into her vehicle.
But as she pulled out of the station, the video shows her car veering straight into one of the pumps.
The collision dislodged the pump, causing a small explosion and a fire. The video shows the rear wheels of the Lincoln spinning before the vehicle backed off the island and sped out of the station parking lot, heading east on East Broad Street.
Richmond fire Lt. Keith Vida said nobody was injured in the incident, which caused extensive damage to the pumps, as well as damage to the overhang at the station.
Vida said the fire was extinguished in a few minutes.
Richmond police later located the Lincoln just more than a mile away, at N Street and Chimborazo Boulevard on Church Hill.
Anyone with information on the driver’s whereabouts is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 780-1000.
Contact staff writer Jim Nolan at jnolan@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6061.
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Copyright (c) 2007, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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