Car Crash At Harp HQ

(Updated 4:55 p.m.) A car crashed Wednesday afternoon into mayoral candidate Toni Harp’s Newhallville campaign headquarters — the third incident at a Harp-related property in five weeks.

The crash was clearly an accident and not at all related to politics, according to Jason Bartlett, Harp’s campaign manager.

Two young women were in the car at the time of the accident, which occurred shortly before 3 p.m.. The driver apparently lost control and crashed into the building, witnesses said.

Two men were outside the building painting Harp’s headquarters at the time. They fell when the car hit a ladder they were on; they went to hospital with injuries.

The building, at the corner of Dixwell and Argyle, has two tenants: a not-for-profit organization called Believe In Me; and Harp’s neighborhood headquarters.

The workmen were hired by the building’s landlord, James Walker (who runs Believe in Me as well), but they also serve as volunteers for the Harp campaign, according to Harp aide Chris Campbell.

The car’s two occupants were not injured.

The passenger told the Independent that the two painters jumped out of the way when the car hit the ladder. ​“When they jumped, they fell,” said the passenger, who declined to be interviewed.

One of the painters was ​“injured bad,” according to Willie Rodriguez, the building’s maintenance man.

The driver was turning off of Dixwell onto Argyle Street, jumped the curb, and ended on the sidewalk, snapping off a stop sign. The car came to a rest at the side of building with Harp headquarters, right near the entrance, leaving a dent in the lower facade below the window. The window did not get smashed.

Rodriguez spread kitty litter over transmission fluid that had leaked all over the sidewalk.

Last week someone shot a bullet through the front door to a Whalley Avenue real-estate business run by Harp’s son Matthew. Four weeks earlier someone smashed windows at Harp’s main mayoral campaign headquarters, also on Whalley Avenue.

In no instance has any evidence emerged that the incidents were related to the mayoral campaign.

At the time of the crash, Harp was bound for a scheduled television interview in Bridgeport. Learning of the crash, she turned around to come to the scene.

Her campaign later issued a release quoting her as saying the following: ​“All we can do now is pray for those involved and their families. We know that two people were rushed to the hospital. We have no information on the driver of the car. It’s at a time like this that the safety and welfare of the people injured come before anything else. Politics are secondary. These hard-working men were simply doing their jobs when tragedy struck. We are confident public safety officials will determine just what happened as soon as possible.”