CAUGHT ON VIDEO: NEW YORK CITY EMT STRUCK BY CAR

A car hit 46 year-old Capt. Steven Quirindongo so violently it smashed the vehicle's windshield and sent him flying through the air. Quirindongo, a 19-year veteran of the city's emergency medical services, was on the scene of a fire on Riverdale Avenue in the Bronx Sunday afternoon when a civilian car moved past police barricades and caught him from behind. Chief Wayne McPartland was on the scene as the damaged health food store where his men had successfully put out the flames. "We had two firefighter minor injuries, " he told us, "and they were taking care of our men and when he (Quirindongo) was walking back to the ambulance he was struck by the civilian vehicle.

Everyone's attention was apparently focused on the fire scene, but witnesses tell us some cars were moving past the partially blocked roadway and continuing north on Riverdale Avenue driving on the wrong side of the street. Capt. Quirindongo was walking from the scene diagonally across the street to a parked ambulance when the Volkswagen CTI with Connecticut plates simply ran into him. Surveillance cameras at a Sunoco station on the street caught the impact.