Bentley in Border Bridge Crash Was a Luxury Car Packed With Power
The New York Times (
archive.ph)
By Ashley Southall and Jesse McKinley
2023-11-25 00:00:59GMT
The car that
exploded this week at a border bridge in Niagara Falls, N.Y., was a 2022 Bentley Flying Spur, the authorities said on Friday, an ultraluxury model capable of reaching a speed of 60 miles per hour in four seconds.
The police identified Kurt P. Villani as the driver and Monica Villani as the passenger. The married couple, who were both 53 and from Grand Island, were the owners of several businesses in western New York. They were headed to a concert in Toronto before the fatal crash, which remained unexplained.
The base model Flying Spur in 2022 came powered by an eight-cylinder engine generating 542 horsepower and weighed 5,137 pounds, according to
specifications from Edmunds, which provides data about automobiles for consumers. Used models cost more than $200,000, and
Car and Driver magazine said that “the Flying Spur’s unbeatable blend of luxury and performance comes with an eye-watering six-figure price tag.”
Speculation had percolated online about the car’s make and model since
the crash just before noon on Wednesday, and investigators were exploring whether a mechanical problem had caused the car to accelerate out of control.
The vehicle was shown on video moving toward the bridge, the Niagara Falls International Rainbow Bridge, at a shocking speed before striking a median and taking flight. It burst into flames on impact with a booth at the border crossing and shattered, strewing metal over a wide debris field.
Vincent A. Ettari, a civil engineer in Westchester County, N.Y., who serves as an expert witness on road design in court cases, said that a trail of dark vapor visible behind the car as it flew through the air in surveillance footage suggested that the driver was alert and not impaired, and that he had been pressing on the brakes. The explosion that followed was foreseeable, Mr. Ettari said.
“At 100 miles per hour, everything is on the table,” he said.
Erin Bronner, a spokeswoman for the Americas arm of Bentley Motors, said on Friday that she could not release information about the Villanis’ car.
A Flying Spur like this 2020 model can reach speeds as fast as 175 miles per hour. Credit...Sjoerd van der Wal/Getty Images
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received no complaints about the 2022 Flying Spur, but Bentley issued three recalls involving the car’s seatbelts, airbags and entertainment systems, according to
the agency’s website. None involved acceleration.
Ms. Bronner said Wednesday’s incident was not tied to a recall in 2021 of some models over a risk that their accelerator pedals could become stuck. She said there had been no such problem on left-hand drive cars, the kind sold in the United States and Canada.
The Niagara Falls police took over the investigation after the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded on Wednesday that the crash was not related to terrorism, despite initial fears and a mad scramble by local, state and federal authorities, which included the closure of several border crossings.
Robert Restaino, the mayor of Niagara Falls, said on Friday that he and Mr. Villani were both from Italian families that had known each other for decades. He said that investigators believed the couple had originally been headed to a Kiss concert, which was called off about three and a half hours before showtime because of a band member’s illness.
The police department’s accident reconstruction team was tracing the couple’s journey to the border crossing, examining surveillance video, the scene of the crash and other evidence collected by the federal authorities.
The Villanis had briefly visited the Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino, a gleaming casino just to the east of the city’s famous waterfalls, before they hit the median, sending the Flying Spur shooting into the air. A border protection officer in a checkpoint booth had minor injuries.
Only about 30 seconds passed between when the car turned onto Niagara Street and when it struck a median at the checkpoint, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile, Mr. Restaino said. In surveillance video released by the authorities, the Bentley appeared to narrowly miss a black car that made a left turn across its path at an intersection just before the checkpoint.
The Villanis were well known in Grand Island, which sits just north of Buffalo in the middle of the Niagara River, according to Nate McMurray, a former town supervisor who still has a home there.
A
family business, their Ace Hardware store,
Gui’s Lumber, has several locations in western New York and on Grand Island, and was known as a friendly alternative to big-box stores.
“It’s not like a Home Depot,” Mr. McMurray said. “It’s more of a community place.”
Friends of the family were stunned by the accident and the fate of the couple, describing the Villanis as
a warm presence in the community, hosting big family dinners, periodically exchanging gifts with neighbors and plowing their driveways during Western New York’s often brutal winters.
“They were extremely generous and kind,” said Chuck Meyer, who lives near the couple. “The whole family was.”
After a fire in 2021 caused $300,000 in damage to the Niagara Sailing Club, the family contributed money and supplies from Gui’s Lumber to help rebuild.
“They couldn’t have been nicer,” Mr. Meyer said.
The Villani family, which includes the couple’s young-adult son and daughter,
released a statement on Friday through the Erie County Sheriff’s Office thanking supporters and asking for privacy. “We are deeply touched,” the family wrote.
Given the busy travel day and the distance the car traveled from the casino to the bridge, the crash could have been even worse, Mr. Restaino said. He estimated that the vehicle passed about four stoplights after turning onto Niagara Street.
“There’s these intersections,” he said. “There could have been a horrific accident anywhere.”
