Driver flees accident, crashes into Gowanus Canal: Police

A Brooklyn driver fleeing from a hit-and-run wreck veered off the road and crashed into the Gowanus Canal on Monday.

Matthew Murphy, driving an Audi, allegedly hit another vehicle, injuring a woman with her 1-year-old daughter, then drove through a barrier and into the frigid canal, the New York Daily News reported. The canal has been a polluted waterway for years because of factory waste and raw sewage.

“What caught my attention was a speeding car. He was going around like 70 to 80 miles an hour,” witness Maurice Deas said to CBS. “And he flew right past me.”

Daes and another bystander pulled Murphy from his car in the canal, only for him to be arrested by police for the earlier alleged hit-and-run, CBS reported. The mother and her 1-year-old went to New York Methodist Hospital in stable condition, the Daily News added.

Murphy’s Audi seems like a total loss, CBS said, also stating that he has been charged with reckless endangerment and fleeing the scene of an accident.

“He was a little out of it. He just kept saying he was an Iraqi War veteran,” Deas said to the Daily News.