SUV suddenly takes off, crashes during auto auction; 3 dead

Orlando Aponte identified one of the three people killed as his sister, Leezandra Aponte, who was in her 30s, lived in Lowell and had three children. He said it was her first day working at LynnWay.

“Her first day on the job, and this is what happens,” he said.

State police investigators were working to reconstruct the accident, which happened while several hundred people were in the building.

An auto auction employee who saw the crash, Woody Tuttle, told WCVB-TV the building has eight lanes in which vehicles on the auction block line up. People were standing between the lanes when one vehicle suddenly took off, Tuttle said.

“I heard a screeching of tires,” he said. “In avoiding the cars, whoever was driving this vehicle hit several people.”

The vehicle then went through the wall of the building, Tuttle said.

The driver “avoided the cars and went on to hit the people who were standing between the cars,” Tuttle said.

Car dealer Fredrick Kyazze said he and a colleague had just moved out of the path of the SUV minutes before it tore through the building.

“We heard a bang from where we just came from,” Kyazze said. “I thought probably the building collapsed or something like that. Then we ran back to see what was going on and … we just saw people lying on the floor.”

Emergency personnel were quick to respond to the scene because four police officers and a firefighter are routinely stationed at the auction site because of the large crowds it draws every Wednesday, Billerica police Chief Daniel Rosa said. Ambulances from several surrounding towns responded.

Images from TV helicopters showed a vehicle covered in debris. Medics wheeled people out of the building on gurneys.

In 2015, an SUV driven by an elderly man hurtled through an auto auction in the Boston suburb of Framingham, striking other cars, patrons and a cinder block wall and injuring eight people. No charges were filed.

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This story has been corrected to show the vehicle was a model year 2006, not 2008.

Rodrique Ngowi, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

SUV suddenly takes off, crashes during auto auction; 3 dead

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