By Frank Warner
The Morning Call
ALLENTOWN, Penn. — The tire that bounced down an Allentown hill Thursday and crashed into a Cetronia Ambulance windshield probably was tossed by a group of 10- and 11-year-old children, police said Friday.
The tire hit the ambulance about 3:30 p.m. as it drove west on Martin Luther King Drive, a short distance west of 10th Street. None of the three ambulance workers inside were hurt, but the vehicle was taken out of service.
Police initially said the tire came from a group up the hill near Spring Garden Street. On Friday, Capt. Bill Reinik said investigators are fairly sure the tire was launched by schoolchildren.
“They believe the kids are from a local middle school,” Reinik said. “They took it [tossing the tire] as a play game. They didn’t realize how serious it was.”
No arrest has been made, but police are still collecting evidence, he said.
Cetronia Chief Executive Larry Wiersch said two people might have died Thursday had the tire passed through the ambulance windshield.
“Had they been driving a little faster, and had that tire come through and entered the cab, it probably would have killed both of the crew members who were in the front,” Wiersch said.
The ambulance was not carrying a patient.
Tire is rolled down hill, smashing Cetronia Ambulance in Allentownhttps://t.co/qXAFZIScOW pic.twitter.com/8L87Ot9iQq
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Wiersch said the tire narrowly missed a woman who was standing next to her car along Martin Luther King Drive. She dove out of the way, he said.
Five days earlier, a Macungie woman reported that yet another tire came down the same hill as she drove by, but she stopped just in time to avoid it. She said it came from the direction of a stocky man up the hill behind a guardrail-like structure.
Reinik said the tires appear to have been part of many large items of refuse dumped on that hillside. Police on Thursday and Friday found another eight tires there, and they were removed, he said.
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