86-Year-Old Man Halts Traffic By Going Wrong Way on Belt Parkway
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An elderly Connecticut man who was reported missing from his daughter’s home on Saturday caused police to shut down about eight miles of the Belt Parkway early yesterday morning after a patrol car spotted him driving into oncoming traffic, police officials said.
Bernard Hummell, 86, who suffers from dementia, was pulled over near the Flatbush Avenue exit at about 3:30 a.m. after two police officers involved in a traffic stop noticed him driving on the wrong side of the road, police said.
Mr. Hummell had gone missing from his daughter’s home in Southington, Conn., at about 12 p.m. on Saturday. He drove at least 114 miles in his 1986 Oldsmobile station wagon before drawing attention near John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The officers who observed Mr. Hummell driving into oncoming traffic radioed to other highway units, which successfully diverted vehicles ahead of Mr. Hummell off of the Belt Parkway. Nobody was injured in the incident, police said.
The daughter of Mr. Hummell, Patricia Schultz, who said her father had never lived in New York City and that she didn’t know why he would drive to Brooklyn, picked up her father yesterday and brought him back to Connecticut.
