DRIVER STILL IN COMA

PHOTO PAGE

Lorain – Police have released the name of the suspect in Sunday night’s car jacking as 33-year-old Michael Kocak.

Sergeant Mark Carpentiere of the Lorain Police Department said that at this point the identity of the passenger is still unknown but Detectives are working diligently on finding out who he is. Sergeant Carpentiere said that they are also investigating the story given to them by the victim to determine that his story is true. “We don’t want to say that we think he is lying, but we would like to get some additional evidence to back up his story.”

Lawrence Dozier was sitting in a driveway across the street at the time of the crash; Dozier said he has never seen anything like it in his life. “I didn’t see him at first, I heard him first. When I looked around I saw him going through the yards across the street and he was moving pretty fast, he wasn’t doing 35 or 40 I can tell you that, he was moving fast. Then it hit that tree and came to a dead stop, then like an acrobat it did this flip and ended up on that porch.”

Walter McGreevy said he heard what he thought was thunder outside so he went out onto his front porch to see what happened. “When I looked outside I could see that the tree in my front yard had been run over then I looked down through my neighbors yards I saw another tree down and that car lying on the porch.”

McGreevy said he saw the car jacking victim pull up to the scene and began yelling into the car that he wanted his money back, although at the time he didn’t know what the man was talking about. “He just kept yelling that he wanted his two hundred dollars and telling the Police that he wanted to press charges. The Police made him get back and they put him in a Police car while the Firemen worked on the car.”

Assistant Chief Gary Burls of the Lorain Fire Department said they received the call of a car crash and the need for extrication on Clifton. “When we arrived we discovered that there was one occupant who needed immediate removal. We stabilized the vehicle with some blocking and airbags, then because the position of the car and then the resting position that the occupant got in it was a little more challenging then just taking a door off. We had to disassemble the steering wheel and steering column before we could finally remove him so it took a little bit of time.”

Kocak was transported by LifeCare Ambulance Paramedics to Community Health Partners. He was then flown to MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland where he remains in a coma.

To see more photos from the scene: CLICK HERE

UPDATE: 6:00 PM
Police have identified the man who was killed in this crash as 51-year-old Lindsay Benner. Brenner was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics.