By Matthew Monks
Josephine Graceffo and her family had arms full of presents around noon when a white van heading north slammed into the back of her Nissan Pathfinder parked outside the Brick Oven Pizza restaurant at 62-29 Woodhaven Blvd.”We heard bang, bang, bang and we saw this white van go flying. Then my car wasn't there any more,” a shaken Graceffo said, minutes after the crash. “I am lucky. I know I'm lucky.”Police said a man driving a white van from the American Business Carpet based in New Hyde Park suffered some kind of a seizure, lost control and careened into Graceffo's car and clipped an ambulance before crashing into a light pole.”It was a medical condition,” a police spokeswoman said. “He lost control of the car.”Five people suffered minor injuries in the accident and were treated at North Shore University in Forest Hills and St. John's Hospital in Elmhurst, according to a spokesman for the Fire Department of New York.But witnesses said things could have been worse had luck not prevailed.The police spokeswoman said that minutes earlier, an officer had responded to a report of a woman in a wheelchair on Woodhaven Boulevard, a busy four-lane road. An ambulance arrived on the scene to take away the woman when the van lost control.The van probably would have killed someone had it not been stopped by the light pole, said Giacomo Graceffo, a Florida resident in town for the birthday.”Thank God that we survived this,” he said.Reach reporter Matthew Monks by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
