EXCLUSIVE: Woman speaks out after close call with object off Bellerose overpass

QUEENS (WABC) -- A mysterious object crashed into a woman's windshield in Nassau County, Long Island.

The woman who barely escaped serious injury when an automotive part came crashing through her windshield, is speaking out exclusively to Eyewitness News.

She was driving across the Cross Island Parkway when the flying object hit her car.

If the piece of metal had pierced her front windshield just a few inches to the right, it would have hit her in the head, most likely killing Karen-Ann Levine.

Police tell Levine all indications are someone threw the heavy cylinder from the overpass and that this was no accident.

Levine said that at first she thought there had been some kind of an explosion in another vehicle as she was driving.

"All of the sudden I heard a loud explosion, not realizing a glass just flew all over my face. I looked up and I said, 'Oh my God,'" Levine said. "I'm glad I was wearing glasses because otherwise it would have hit my eyes."

Then she realized as she got off the next exit, Exit 27, the chunk of metal was sitting in her back seat.

She did call police. First she called the NYPD, which handed this over to the Nassau County Police Department because this happened so close to the Long Island-Queens border.

It's a roughly 4-inch tall, 10-pound solid piece of metal, and police believe it is some kind of car part.

"They definitely think somebody threw it, with the weight of the cylinder and the trajectory and the impact," Levine said.

The overpass connects a parking lot at Belmont Park to the Cross Island South. It does have a fence around it, about 8-feet tall on each side.

Levine says that's just not good enough. The overpass is accessible by car or easily by foot.

Ivan Perez of SafeLite Auto Glass is replacing the windshield. Its design, he says, made a huge difference. The windshield is laminated so its two sheets of glass with a lamination in the middle which prevents the window from exploding.

Levine was not hurt but very shaken up.

"I didn't process anything until I got in to a quiet state and I completely broke down and cried, thinking that was only a couple of inches away from my head, from my face, and what could that have done? I would have been dead," Levine said.

Unfortunately there are no cameras near this overpass so it will be really tough to catch whoever did this.