Simone WilsonA Lincoln Town Car reportedly being used as a fancy taxi smashed into the Specialty Car Craft customization and parts shop on South La Cienega (a low-profile go-to for L.A. celebrities) around 3:30 a.m.
The impact shattered the shop's entire glass front — causing a window frame and hundreds of shards to rain down on a yellow Ferrari identical to Kobe Bryant's. The word “Baller24” (if you can call that a word) is even plastered across the front windshield, written backward so as to show up in rearview mirrors.
Compare and contrast:
“Kobe Bryant's Ferrari 458”; Credit: Bart Aldrich
“The window frame of the door crashed down onto a yellow Ferrari that has a Los Angeles Lakers sticker on the back windshield and another sticker that says 'Baller 24' — Kobe Bryant's jersey number.”; Credit: ABC7
Crazy, right? Of all luxury vehicles to get in the way of your creative wee-hour shortcut across La Cienega! And KNX news radio reported this morning that other casualties included a “Lamborghini and a very rare TVR Tuscan S — the only one in the country.”
“There was a limousine in half our building,” the shop owner told KNX. “It destroyed all these cars here.”
The damage was extensive enough that the Town Car driver decided to flee the scene on foot. But not before pulling a woman from the back of the vehicle and leaving her bloody on the sidewalk, according to City News Service. The victim, in her early 30s, is hospitalized in “stable condition” at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with a broken pelvis, jaw and leg.
“Basically, an unknown male took her outside and placed her in the alley,” says LAPD detective Arain in the West Traffic Division. “Then he took off running.”
A female employee at Specialty Car Craft tells LA Weekly that she watched the approximately 35-year-old white male, dressed somewhat unprofessionally in jeans and a casual shirt, leave his passenger at the scene and sprint off into the night.
“We're trying to clean up right now,” says the employee. “There are quite a lot of cars damaged.”
Detectives say that the hit-and-run driver “was working for a company,” but won't reveal which one. They currently have no leads on his whereabouts.
According to the Specialty Car Craft website, its “specialty has been very high end and exotic cars. We're also very well known for doing superb work on Lotus cars. As for exotics, we've done a huge amount of work on automobiles from Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley and Rolls- Royce.”
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