Tesla 'explodes like a bomb' in fatal fire accident

Two people are dead after a dramatic Tesla crash on Monday morning in White Plains, north of New York City. The electric vehicle jumped a curb, hit a tree and crashed into a residential building. Firefighters pulled the burning wreckage away from the building, but then the electric vehicle exploded, injuring a passerby with flying debris. It is unclear how the accident happened, but eyewitnesses described something eerily similar to an unintended acceleration event.

Millie Ortiz Sheehan, the 70-year-old wife of a council member in nearby Greenburgh, was Driving with the Tesla with her 36-year-old daughter-in-law Diana Trochez Sheehan in the passenger seat. The couple had just dropped two of Millie's grandchildren off at a daycare center, the journal news. Although both women died in the accident, no one was in the apartment the Tesla crashed into. One of the residents came home and saw the incident, the newspaper explained:

Zaneta Williams, 46, who lives in the apartment that was hit by the car and caught fire, said she was lucky she wasn't home when the incident occurred. She could have been working from her home office. “I left to go to work about 15 to 20 minutes before the incident,” Williams said. “My son's room is the room that was completely destroyed, but he's back in college, so thank God he's not here and no one was in the house.”

“But I'm glad no one was in the apartment,” Williams said. “I have to tell my son the news tonight.”

When rescue workers arrived, both the car and the building were engulfed in flames. Investigators believe the two women were trapped in the Tesla and had no way to escape. according to WABC. Among those evacuated from the apartment were two children who were treated on site for minor injuries. The passerby who was hit by debris from the explosion was taken to a hospital.

Investigators will likely determine whether unintended acceleration contributed to this accident. Tesla denied that its vehicles were affected by the alleged problems in 2020, when Federal regulators examined a petition to launch an investigation. However, a Cybertruck was involved in a similar incident when it unexpectedly shot into a house beginning of the year.