WILD RIDE:
Rocco Scuiletti yesterday says the lug nuts on the wheel of his truck tore up Kerry Kennedy’s tire when she slammed his rig.
WILD RIDE:
Rocco Scuiletti yesterday says the lug nuts on the wheel of his truck (above) tore up Kerry Kennedy’s tire when she slammed his rig. (
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Kerry Kennedy appeared to be asleep at the wheel seconds before she ignored a warning blast from a tractor-trailer’s horn and slammed her Lexus into the big rig during a wild ride on a Westchester highway last week, the trucker told The Post yesterday.
“She’s very lucky she didn’t kill somebody,” driver Rocco Scuiletti said yesterday, recounting how the erratic Kennedy terrorized him and other drivers for more than three miles before crashing, careering off Interstate 684 and being busted by cops.
Scuiletti, 47, said that before the crash, he saw Kennedy’s head drop toward the steering wheel, snap up, and then “nod off” again, as she veered in and out of lanes.
Kennedy — the ex-wife of Gov. Cuomo and daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy — nearly hit several other cars with her 2008 silver-white Lexus RX 350 as she kept pace with the 65-mph traffic, the trucker said.
“My first impression was that she was really, really drunk,” said Scuiletti, a Bronx native, in an exclusive interview.
“I’ve been a truck driver for 22 years. I’m pretty sure she was half-asleep or very, very intoxicated.
“She scared the heck out of a lot of people. She was completely out of it,” he said.
Kennedy — who was charged with driving while ability impaired by drugs — told cops she had taken the powerful sleeping drug Ambien before getting behind the wheel that morning, sources said.
Scuiletti said Kennedy “looked like she just rolled out of bed,” when he first noticed her as she barreled down the highway. She was wearing a loose tank top, pink and white shorts or a short skirt, and “her hair was down and pretty messed up,” he said.
Kennedy is expected to plead not guilty at a hearing in North Castle court tonight.
A spokesman for her has denied she was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Scuiletti was en route to Brooklyn, traveling southbound in the far right lane just past Exit 4 on I-684, when Kennedy “came from the extreme left lane and started driving in the center lane.
“She slowed and cut somebody off. Then she started drifting toward me,” Scuiletti said.
“I pulled toward the breakdown lane to avoid her, and she went back to the center.”
Suddenly, Scuiletti said, “She started coming at me again, like she didn’t see me. She was starting to nod off, her head was bobbing toward the steering wheel.
“I hit the horn. I couldn’t go back into the breakdown lane because there was a disabled truck up ahead. I could either hit that truck or let her do whatever she was going to do.
“I hit the brakes, but she hit the brakes at the same time and veered right into me,” Scuiletti said.
“When she hit me, my left tire tore up her passenger-side door, and the lug nuts on my truck tore up her tire — just shredded through it and peeled the tire right off.
“She woke up a little bit, not a lot — not the way you’d wake up if you’d just hit a 6,000-pound truck,” he said.
“The only thing she wanted to do then was get away, because she floored it and took off.”
“You could barely see her car, there was so much smoke,’’ he said. “She was driving on the rim. How she kept on driving, I have no idea.”
Kennedy’s tire came off in one full piece and shot backward, into oncoming traffic, he said.
“She drove another half-mile or so, cutting at least three people off. At Exit 3, she suddenly shot over to the right at the last minute, cutting off another car and barely missing it,” Scuiletti said.
Kennedy pulled over near the end of the off-ramp — and then reversed into a guardrail as a passing motorist approached her car, law-enforcement sources said.
North Castle police arrived to find her slumped at the wheel.
She later gave blood and urine samples at a nearby State Police barracks. Results are not yet back.
Scuiletti — who made headlines in 1990 after pulling two people from the lethal blaze at the Bronx Happy Land social-club fire — said he didn’t stop after Kennedy hit him.
“I would never have caught up with her, ” said the driver, whose truck had “no damage at all.”