Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Tesla crash to get federal inquiry
Two teens who died in electric car blaze were ‘as close as brothers’
Two young men, “as close as brothers,” were supposed to be attending college in the fall. Instead, their families and classmates are mourning them after a fiery crash of an electric car on a curvy road on Fort Lauderdale beach.
Driver Barrett Riley, of Fort Lauderdale, and front-seat passenger Edgar Monserratt Martinez, of Aventura, both 18 and students at Pine Crest School, were trapped in the burning wreck and died in Tuesday’s crash, police and fire officials said. Another passenger, also 18, was taken to a hospital.
The trio were traveling in a Tesla Model S sedan along Seabreeze Boulevard before it crashed into a concrete wall, police said.
Fort Lauderdale police said excessive speed may have been a factor in the crash, but they could not say how fast the car was going, where the fire began or what caused it.
The Tesla does not use a gasoline-powered engine and is powered by a battery. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team to Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday to investi-
“These two young men were truly beloved.” Dana Markham, president, Pine Crest school
“Electric vehicles are not more prone to fire, but batteries can burn hotter fires that are harder to extinguish.” Karl Brauer, Autotrader
gate, to “primarily focus on the emergency response in relation to the electric vehicle battery fire, including fire department activities and towing operations.”
The NTSB said it has a history of investigating emerging technologies to understand their effect on transportation accidents.
Tesla issued a statement about the fatal crash that it said involved a longtime customer, although police did not identify the car’s owner.
“Our thoughts are with the families and friends affected by this tragedy,” the company said. “The family who owned the car has been a close friend of Tesla for many years, and this hits us particularly hard.”
Riley and Monserratt Martinez were “best friends who were as close as brothers,” classmates said during a memorial Wednesday afternoon at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, which Riley attended from Pre-K and where Monserratt Martinez enrolled in sixth grade, the school said.
“These two young men were truly beloved and their deaths have left a hole in all of our hearts,” said Dana Markham, president of the school.
Back-seat passenger Alexander Berry, of Fort Lauderdale, was ejected from the car. Firefighters took him to Broward Health Medical Center, where he was in fair condition Wednesday, the hospital said.
The crash happened about 6:45 p.m. Tuesday in the 1300 block of Seabreeze Boulevard, about a mile from the Riley family home.
Wendy Mascolo lives near the crash site and was jogging when, through her headphones, she heard what sounded like a gunshot.
Seeing three fire trucks and about five police cars, “I took off running and when I came upon the scene, the car was completely engulfed,” she said. “I could see the flames but I couldn’t really see the car, I could just see the outline of the car. … I couldn’t see that there were people in the car.”
Wreckage was strewn all over the boulevard; firefighters aimed hoses at the car.
Mascolo said she saw Berry sitting on the ground. He was scuffed up and was missing his shoes.
“He was sitting up, he was very shaken, he was very much in shock, staring straight ahead,” Mascolo said.
An ambulance crew took him away. Then she noticed a very upset older man whose car had been sideswiped in the crash. Mascolo said she prayed with him and helped him settle down. He was not injured, she said.
She then noticed two stunned boys standing nearby who said they were friends with the teens in the Tesla and had been following in a separate car when they witnessed the accident.
“They were standing on the sidewalk, looking directly at the car,” she said. “They were in shock. I didn’t see them cry until their parents got there.”
When firefighters covered the Tesla with a tarp after putting out the fire, “you could just see them crumble,” Mascolo said. “I prayed with them and stayed until their parents got there.”
Riley’s parents showed up first and police kept them away from the crash scene, she said.
Riley, the eldest of seven children, planned to attend Purdue University. At Pine Crest, he was on the crew and tennis teams and, with Monserratt Martinez, loved boating and fishing with their friends. Monserratt Martinez was accepted at Babson College. He was so good at finance that he shared investment advice with his teachers, the school said.
Final exams and AP tests for Pine Crest upper grade students that were scheduled for this week were canceled, and more than a dozen counselors were provided to meet with students and staff, the school said.
Berry, the crash survivor, attended Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale. He had just completed his freshman year at the University of Florida, where he is majoring in engineering, records show.
The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office performed autopsies on Wednesday and the cause and manner of the deaths still were being determined.
Tesla said Wednesday that it had not yet been able to retrieve logs from the vehicle, “but everything we have seen thus far indicates a very high-speed collision and that Autopilot was not engaged. Serious high-speed collisions can result in a fire, regardless of the type of car.”
The Autopilot feature allows the car to drive itself while measuring road conditions and traffic, but motorists must be prepared to take control of the car, the company said on its website.
The auto manufacturer says that a gas car in the United States is more likely to experience a fire than a Tesla and that its battery packs “are designed so that in the rare circumstance a fire occurs, it spreads much more slowly than in a gas-powered car.”
The chemicals inside battery cells can be corrosive and flammable, said Karl Brauer, executive publisher for Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book. “Electric vehicles are not more prone to fire, but batteries can burn hotter fires that are harder to extinguish,” he said. “Once there is a fire and you melt the battery pack, chemicals come out and when those chemicals come out, the fire can start, even without a spark.”
Tesla produced an emergency responder guide for the 2014 Model S that describes precautions and procedures when assisting victims at accident scenes.
The company in 2014 strengthened the Tesla’s battery shields after road debris caused two accidents in the United States and one in Mexico, according to a USA Today report. The foreign objects damaged the cars’ battery packs and resulted in fires. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration ended a fire probe in the wake of the company’s changes.
“In this case, Tesla’s revision of vehicle ride height and addition of increased underbody protection should reduce both the frequency of underbody strikes and the resultant fire risk,” the agency wrote on its website.
In a 2014 blog post, Tesla chairman and co-founder Elon Musk noted that drivers involved in those accidents had walked away without injury.
Since then, there have been other reports of Tesla fires related to accidents, although they appear to have been few in number.
Fort Lauderdale police ask anyone who may have witnessed Tuesday’s crash or who has video of it to contact Traffic Homicide Investigator Paul Williams at 954-828-5755.