Dubai: A holidaying American woman was sliced in half in mid-air by a utility pole after she was catapulted from a fiery Ferrari crash on Sunday attributed to a lethal combination of alcohol and speed, a senior Dubai prosecutor told Gulf News on Tuesday.
Describing the scene as one of the most grisly he has ever witnessed in his professional career, Prosecutor General Salah Bu Farousha said the female victim was ejected from the open top of the sports car when it slammed into a lamppost and erupted into a fireball on March 6.
Early estimates suggest the two-seater sports car was travelling along Al Sarayah Street in Jumeirah Lakes Towers at up to four times the 40km/h speed limit around 12.40am when the single-vehicle accident happened.
The roadside was strewn with pieces of the disintegrated sports car when police, fire and prosecution responders arrived on scene, including Bu Farousha, who was called to the site to examine the accident between 12.45am and 3am.
Alcohol was certainly a factor in the collision that claimed the lives of two Canadian men and two American women, forensic testing has revealed.
“The four persons, who travelled in the car, were all drunk — alcohol in their blood levels varied between 19 and 88 mg/dl. The on-site inspection of the crash scene was horrendous. I cannot reveal or speculate the exact speed, but evidently it was multiple times more than the Al Sarayah Street’s allowed limit [40km/h]. Obviously while inspecting the crash scene, the view was massive. The accident happened on a relatively hilly street … there is a slope and the vehicle is a light, sporty and special race car that requires special kind of driving, particularly in such a street,” said Bu Farousha, who also serves as Chief Traffic Prosecutor and Head of Dubai Traffic Public Prosecution.
Blood samples of victims’ bodies at General Department of Forensic Medicine showed elevated levels of alcohol, said Bu Farousha.
Dubai Police have identified the two men as holidaying Canadians Cody Nixon, 25, a boxer, and James Portuondo, 27.
Nixon represented his home province of Ontario at the Canadian Boxing Championships in 2012 and has since travelled around the world. Friends commenting on social media said he was a free spirit.
Nixon’s adventures were illustrated by his world travels in pictures uploaded to his TravelwithCody Instagram page where the last image he posted was himself with a yellow Ferrari.
The other victims in the crash were American women identified as two holidaying Boston university students — Priscilla Perez Torres and Victoria McGrath — who survived injuries sustained in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
The four were crammed into the speeding two-seater Ferrari sports car at the time of the accident.
The Ferrari’s Canadian driver had 26 mg/dl of alcohol in his blood and had to be removed from inside the car.
The three other passengers [Nixon, Torres and McGrath} were ejected from the vehicle.
The exact speed won’t be specified until results of the special electronic speed reader recovered from the car wreckage are examined, he said.
Security cameras’ footage taken from a hotel’s CCTV cameras located 10 minutes away from the crash scene, according to Bu Farousha, showed that the victims weren’t seated in a normal way inside the Ferrari.
“The footage clearly showed the boxer sitting between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat where the two women sat clutching each other. The convertible roof was open and one of the women was thrown out and hit a nearby lamppost and was cut in two. The other two passengers were also thrown out of the car and died instantly. In terms of criminal jurisdiction, the criminal case will be dropped automatically due to the driver’s demise,” he said.
“Meanwhile, the successors of the other victims have the civil right to seek blood money … but that would only be decided by the Civil Court when and if their families decide to pursue legal action,” said Bu Farousha.
Prosecution investigation remains pending until the final results and reports of fire experts and Dubai Police’s mechanical committee are concluded, he said.
“It is expected to be finalised within a week or so,” he said.
Boston mourns young women
One of the female victims in the fatal Ferrari crash in Dubai on Sunday morning was a college student who was badly wounded during the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
Victoria McGrath was killed on Sunday, along with her roommate at Northeastern University, Priscilla Perez Torres, the Boston school confirmed.
McGrath, 23, received severe shrapnel injuries to her left leg from the first of two bombs placed near the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013. Three people were killed and more than 260 others were injured in the bombing.
This April 15, 2013 file photo shows firefighter James Plourde carrying Victoria McGrath after a bombing near the Boston Marathon finish line. AP
A Northeastern spokesman said McGrath was scheduled to graduate this spring from Northeastern’s school of business.
Torres, who was also scheduled to graduate this spring, came to Northeastern from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, and was passionate about travel and working on issues related to nutrition and women’s health.
The US Embassy in Abu Dhabi declined to comment.
With input from Associated Press
