MT. AIRY – A busy stretch of Colerain Avenue was shut down for several hours during morning rush hour Wednesday after a 53-year-old man died in what Cincinnati police described as a freak accident in front of Mt. Airy Elementary School, 5730 Colerain Ave.
Officers were called to the area about 5:30 a.m. after they received conflicting reports from passersby that either a child or man was down in the road without a pulse.
Once they arrived, initial communication reports indicate police determined a male motorist who had been driving westbound in the parking lot was doing “doughnuts” when he somehow lost control of his 1998 Kia Sephia. He had a female passenger in the front seat beside him.
The Kia jumped a curb, ran into a grassy median between the parking lot and Colerain Avenue and struck a tree.
The man, identified as Emmanuel Agyekum, hit his head on the tree and was pronounced dead at the scene.
But it was not immediately clear how Agyekum was actually hurt – whether he was ejected from the car or standing outside the car or was partially hanging out of the car when it crashed into the tree – said Lt. Bruce Hoffbauer, commander of the Cincinnati Police Traffic Unit.
“It’s still a mystery whether the victim was completely out of the car or partially out of the car. We need to find out exactly what they were doing in the school parking lot and what this person was doing out of the car,” Hoffbauer said. “It’s a strange situation.”
The car continued into Colerain Avenue, where it struck a southbound 1999 Honda Accord. The driver of the Honda was wearing a seat belt and was not injured, police said.
The passenger in the Kia, Agartha Donkor, 46, also wore a seat belt and was not injured. She said she lives with Agyekum nearby on Renee Court.
They moved to Cincinnati earlier this year from Ghana in West Africa and had gone to the school parking lot so early for a driving lesson, she said.
“He was just showing me to drive,” she said in a brief phone interview Wednesday hours after the accident.
The impact of the crash, especially so early in the morning, woke several neighbors.
Lawrence Murray ran up the street to see if he could help. He arrived before police and fire crews to see a neighbor who is a nurse pumping on AgyekumÂ’s chest.
“It was a violent crash,” Murray, 60, said. “I started hearing screaming.”
Murray saw the female passenger who had been with the victim before the accident, “ranting and raving and screaming. She was going back and fourth, out of her head,” he said. “She was frantic and kept saying ‘How did he get there?’”
The accident did not delay the regular start of classes at 7:45 a.m., said Janet Walsh, a spokeswoman for Cincinnati Public Schools.
The Cincinnati Police Traffic Unit is asking witnesses of the crash to contact them at 513-352-2514.
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