13 Injured as Car Plows Into Clinic

A car crashed into a waiting room of a health clinic on 83rd Street on Friday, leaving three people hospitalized in critical condition, including two elderly women who each lost part of a leg, police said. Ten others also were injured.

Initially, police thought the car, a black Nissan 300 ZX driven by Ijumaa Owens, 33, of Hawthorne, had been racing a white Lincoln Town Car and lost control. By late Friday evening, however, police said it appeared the cars were not racing but that the Lincoln Town Car had been driving at high speed and plowed into Owens’ car, pushing it into the clinic.

Three of the injured were released at the scene and the rest taken to hospitals, Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Jason Lee said Friday night.

Felix Gonzales, who was driving behind the cars when the accident occurred, described the pandemonium at the Salvador El Mundo Clinica when Owens’ car plowed into an area where mostly women and children were waiting.

“I can’t even explain it,” Gonzales said of the hysteria at the clinic, adding that neighbors and passersby rushed to help, trying to get through the rubble to the victims. “This little girl was stuck under the car.”

The Town Car fled the scene, police said.

Steps away, at the family clinic of Dr. Amani Eldessouky, doctors, medical aides and pregnant women waiting for exams rushed next door after hearing a loud bang and the screams and cries of victims.

“I saw them dragging two ladies out,” said Ana Rodriguez, a medical aide at the Eldessouky clinic. A man’s head was slashed open, she said, and two little girls were also hurt.

“It was a terrible scene,” said Eldessouky, who used to work at the Salvador clinic. She grabbed towels from her clinic and used them to make tourniquets for the women whose limbs had been severed, she said.

“We do have traffic accidents in this area, but I have no memory of an accident this serious,” said Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Owens was taken to County-USC Medical Center and released. No charges were filed against him. The driver of the Lincoln could face felony hit-and-run charges, said LAPD Lt. Paul Vernon. Police were looking for him and the Lincoln, which had tinted windows and no license plate and now has a dented right front portion.

“There’s a good chance that someone knows who the Lincoln Town Car belongs to,” Vernon said. “We’d really like to know who they are.”

A man who sustained serious facial injuries and a broken ankle remained hospitalized in critical condition Friday evening, police spokesman Lee said. Two toddlers also were hospitalized with minor injuries.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the LAPD South Traffic Division at (213) 485-7336.