Postal worker escapes harm as car crashes in Roosevelt

Terry Owens figures he's a pretty lucky man.

Typically, he's at his desk at the Roosevelt Post Office before 7 a.m. But Monday, Owens said, he was several minutes late because his mother was in the hospital, so he hadn't arrived when a black sport utility vehicle crashed through the post office's wall of brick and cinder block.

Owens' desk is just inside that wall.

"Normally I'm sitting in my desk at a quarter to seven," said Owens, 55, of Levittown, the officer in charge of the Roosevelt building at 1 Babylon Tpke. "I would have been dead. . . . I would have been gone."

The vehicle pierced the side wall of the building at about 6:55 a.m., Nassau County police said. Police said no one required medical attention.

Post office spokeswoman Krista Riemma said workers normally start at 8 a.m., and she described Owens, a postal employee for 26 years, as a habitual "early bird."

As workers pulled the SUV from the building, brick and cinder block crumbling down, Owens shook his head, "That actually hit where I sit every morning."

With Jim Staubitser