A New Jersey emergency health worker died on Saturday morning when a car slammed into an ambulance in East Brunswick, police said.
Rutgers University alumna Hinal Patel, 22, had been preparing to start next month at the institution’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences as she came to work her last shift with Spotswood EMS on Saturday, NJ Advance Media reported.
Patel and the ambulance’s driver, Mark Seube, were driving west on Ryders Lane near Cranbury Road with their lights and sirens on while hurrying to an accident elsewhere in the town south of Staten Island at around 8 a.m., said East Brunswick police Lt. Kevin F Zebro.
But a 2013 Toyota Prius t-boned the ambulance as the emergency team drove through the intersection. The ambulance crashed down on its side and careened into another car, Zebro said.
Patel died in the collision, but Seube and the driver of the Prius, Kathleen Meade, suffered only non-life threatening injuries, according to police. The driver of the third car was not hurt in the crash.
Police haven’t arrested or charged anyone in the fatal accident, WABC-TV reported Saturday night.
Family members and friends of Patel, who lived in nearby Piscataway and received her degree in biological sciences from Rutgers earlier this year, are trying to come to terms with her tragic death, they told NJ Advance Media.
“She was the most amazing person I ever knew,” said Bianca Patel, a close friend who is not related to her. “She’s saved thousands and thousands of people. … I just wish someone had a chance to help her.”
The late Patel planned to pursue medical school to become a physician or physician’s assistant after her graduate program, but she had been working as an EMT for the North Stelton Volunteer Fire Company since September 2012.
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In Memorial, Hinal Patel.
Posted by North Stelton Volunteer Fire Company on Saturday, July 25, 2015
She volunteered for five years at Saint Peter’s University Hospital in New Brunswick before she started with North Stelton, the North Stelton company said in a statement. Her hometown firefighters draped black bunting over their building and one of the company’s ambulances in her honor on Saturday.
“Hinal was a very smart, dedicated member of our family and she will be greatly missed,” the company’s statement said.
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