MUST SEE: Video of woman plummeting off 7th floor of parking garage
FOX 7 has obtained video showing the moment a car plunged off of a Downtown Austin parking garage. The video also shows the near miss of another driver being crushed and the rush to save the woman inside were all caught on camera.
On July 13th, William Burch pulled his Chevy Tahoe into the bottom floor of the Littlefield parking garage at 6th and Brazos, backed out and stalled for a second
In a clip the vehicle falls out of the sky, crashing into the back of his SUV. It lands upside down.
Burch and other witnesses rush to help the woman inside. Officers say she hit the wrong pedal on the 7th floor of the garage and broke through cable wiring lining the parking spots. She would survive with what ems called non-life-threatening injuries.
FOX 7 interviewed Burch that day.
"She was upside down. They had to pull her out from her seatbelt and her head was bloody and they pulled her off to the side under the awning. I rushed back over here and called my wife to let her know I was okay,” he said.
On Thursday, we obtained surveillance video from the Austin Police Department and showed Burch the clips.
"Gosh. That's crazy,” said Burch.
Three different surveillance cameras captured the incident.
On the way down the woman's car hit a building on the other side of the alley taking out a surveillance camera. It flips over to show people inside the garage leaning out to see what happened.
Then, there's another angle. It's a more close up look, but a bit blurry.
"It kind of brings back instant memories of what happened. I'm still doing work in that building," said Burch. "For a couple weeks it was kind of hard to get back over there and after seeing this I'll probably be looking up again. I stopped looking up. Now I'll be looking up again."
No matter how you look at it…
"It's amazing I'm still alive,” said Burch.
The cables are hanging just as they were after the crash on July 13th. City code enforcement has made several visits to the site and is working with the property owner, their engineer and a city engineer to bring the cable system into compliance.
Temporary safeguards in the form of water-filled barriers have been put in place along the alley side of the garage where there are cables. Those barriers were placed on all floors. The parking area where the incident took place is fenced off and people cannot park there.
The deadline to get the repairs made is on the 21st. However, the property owner will need to file an extension because they are redesigning the entire cable system.
A similar incident happened less than a year ago in which a vehicle was dangling from the top floor. n both incidents, police say drivers hit the wrong pedal.