Ice cream truck driver survives 20-foot fall down New Jersey embankment

Friday, May 14, 2021

An ice cream truck driver is lucky to be alive after careening down a steep embankment in New Jersey Thursday evening.

FORT LEE, New Jersey -- An ice cream truck driver is lucky to be alive after careening down a steep embankment in New Jersey Thursday evening.

It happened just after 4 p.m. on the Henry Hudson Drive in Fort Lee, where the 2014 Ford truck belonging to Lexylicious out of Toms River veered off the roadway and down the cliff.

Police say the 22-year-old driver lost control of the vehicle and fell some 20 feet before hitting trees and landing on its left side.

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The hand sanitizer ignited and set the whole car on fire.

Three good Samaritans -- Hackensack Special Police Officer Tabish Tahir, Christopher Fuschini, and Justin Pacifico -- who were in a nearby park with their families and saw the crash jumped into action.

"We heard it, and the second we looked up the hill, it was on its side," Fuschini said.

They raced into the woods and began climbing to the vehicle.

"Where the truck was from where we were, it was very high," Tahir said. "And just to get up there was a big thing."

But they were motivated to help.

"It was a little bit of a long haul," Pacifico said. "But then again, we were told not to look back, because it was actually really steep."

And when they reached the truck, they worked to rescue the driver.

"I grabbed my knife out, I broke his windshield, got him out safely, pulled him out," Fuschini said.

The driver, also from Toms River, complained of head and neck pain and was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center.

"It was just us being there in the right place at the right time," Tahir said. "It's nothing heroic or anything we did. It's jus something that should have been done."

The Fort Lee Police Department and Fort Lee Fire Department also responded, and the cause of the crash is under investigation.

The driver was heading to Ross Dock at the time.

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