By Matt Sledge and John Simerman
The Advocate
ENDYMION, La. — When others ran away from the terrifying scene of the Endymion parade crash on Saturday night, off-duty firefighter Gino Ascani ran toward it.
The eight-year veteran of the New Orleans Fire Department said he could not let suspected drunk driver Neilson Rizzuto escape justice after he plowed into 32 people at a Mid-City intersection. Ascani said he wrestled Rizzuto out of a truck and onto the ground, where he was arrested by a police officer.
“I didn’t even think,” Ascani said. “I knew that people were going to be hurt if not dead, and I was trying to stop the guy.”
Two days after the crash, new accounts from victims and witnesses were still continuing to emerge about the crash that generated international headlines and marred an otherwise nearly idyllic day of Carnival.
Rizzuto, 25, of Paradis, remained in jail Monday in lieu of $125,000 bail.
Meanwhile, authorities said that all but three of those injured in the crash have been released from area hospitals. Authorities have not given any word on the condition of the victims still hospitalized.
Ascani said that on Saturday night he was working as a bouncer for an Endymion party hosted by real estate appraiser Larry Lagasse, 63, on the block of North Carrollton Avenue just on the river side of Orleans Avenue.
The sequence of events that ended with the crash appeared to start well before Rizzuto reached the intersection itself, Ascani and Lagasse said. Both men said that shortly before 6:45 p.m., they saw Rizzuto, who was driving a silver-gray truck, hit two vehicles in the middle of the 600 block of North Carrollton.
“I heard this scraping and kind of boom,” Ascani said. “It hit a parked truck and just kind of scraped by, like opening a sardine can.”
Two other witnesses who did not want to be identified said Saturday night that they believed Rizzuto may have hit a pedestrian in the middle of the 600 block before speeding up to the intersection and injuring the vast majority of the victims.
After the first collision, Rizzuto then sped toward the Carrollton-Orleans intersection, Ascani said. The firefighter said he realized that Rizzuto was heading straight toward the crowds crossing the busy intersection.
Rizzuto then hit two more vehicles in the middle of the intersection before veering left into the neutral ground and hitting a dump truck, Ascani said.
The firefighter said the thought that he might have witnessed an act of terrorism on the scale of the 2016 truck attack in Nice, France, never crossed his mind. Instead, he believed that Rizzuto was simply angry that he had gotten stuck in traffic.
As the crowd fled from the crash scene, Ascani ran toward the truck. He saw a police officer on the left side of Rizzuto’s truck, trying to open the driver’s side door. So Ascani made for the passenger-side door.
“When I looked in he was curled up in a fetal position, so by instinct I just grabbed him to make sure he couldn’t get away,” Ascani said. The firefighter then pulled Rizzuto to the ground.
“The thought that crossed my head is that he knew what he did,” Ascani said. “The severity of the situation came down on him, and he was just scared.”
A cop then said he had Rizzuto under control, so Ascani made for the nearest ambulance and grabbed a handful of neck braces to apply to victims.
“There were people scattered everywhere, and New Orleans EMS is the best in the country, so we just started triaging people. Being a fireman, I know what we’re supposed to do to help EMS out,” Ascani said.
The firefighter said he has spoken to two national news outlets but hasn’t let his sudden fame get to his head.
“I know that anyone who is a New Orleans fireman or EMS that would have been in my situation would have done the exact same thing,” he said.
Ascani returned to his duties as a bouncer at the Lagasse party after he finished helping the wounded. On Monday, he was back to work at the Engine 18 station house in Lakeview.
Many victims of the crash also had returned to their homes and workplaces by Monday, although shaken by their close brushes with death.
Max Mattione, a 19-year-old freshman at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, said he was visiting New Orleans for his first time over the weekend. The St. Louis native was meeting up with friends at the intersection — and planning to go to Bourbon Street later — when the crash happened.
“We went to the neutral ground. We were just saying hi to each other, and that’s when the truck came through,” Mattione said. “I just turned my head to the left for a slight second, and I saw it, so I was able to brace myself a little bit. I just got hit by the side of the car.”
Mattione said that seven students from Spring Hill were hit. Six of them sought medical treatment; all were released on Sunday, he said. Their injuries ranged from staples in the head to a swollen leg, a sprained ankle and a lacerated face, he said.
“We all feel really blessed that no one was killed, and the injuries were kept to what they were,” he said.
Also among the injured was veteran NOPD Lt. Michelle Woodfork, the niece of Warren Woodfork, who was the city’s police chief from 1985 to 1991.
Warren Woodfork said he had spoken with his niece and that she was in “very good spirits.” She was released from the hospital on Sunday, he said.
“She got bruised really bad, but no serious injuries. Nothing broken,” he said. “She’s all right. She’s a Woodfork. She’s made out of tough stuff.”
Police gave no new details Monday on their investigation into how Rizzuto — a Ponchatoula native who also goes by the nickname “Pasta,” according to his Facebook page — wound up with a blood alcohol content of .232 percent, nearly three times the legal limit.
Rizzuto’s father, John Rizzuto, told WWL-TV on Sunday that his son claimed that a stranger gave him a drink before the crash and that was “the last thing he remembered.”
But the Paradis man appears to be acclimating to his new environment inside the Orleans Parish jail, said a source familiar with his incarceration.
Rizzuto, who is being housed in a low-security cell block in the Orleans Justice Center, has sought to calm the nerves of family members, telling them he’s made a few friends and that the extensive news coverage of the crash has lent him a measure of fame among fellow inmates, the source said.
It was uncertain whether his family would make the $125,000 bail that Magistrate Commissioner Robert Blackburn set Sunday.
Although Rizzuto was booked on four felony charges — reckless operation of a vehicle, hit-and-run driving and two counts of vehicular negligent injuring, a crime that carries a maximum five-year prison term — he could face dozens of additional charges.
According to an initial police report, Rizzuto struck “a known total of 32 pedestrians,” including 23 who were taken to the hospital.
No one was killed — a fact that Rizzuto learned Monday morning, the source said.
Police secured a warrant Sunday afternoon to draw Rizzuto’s blood for testing.
It’s unclear whether Rizzuto has hired a private attorney. A public defender represented him at his bail hearing Sunday.
Should District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office accept the felony charges, or others, Rizzuto’s case will be allotted to Criminal District Court Judge Benedict Willard.
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