Urban Warrior | Towed's wild ride: Crashed car crushed

TERI BUTTERLY was on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance last May when someone handed her a clipboard and told her to sign some paperwork.

Butterly had just been injured in a car wreck and wasn't sure what she was signing.

"I really thought it was for the EMTs," she said. "I found out it was a tow-truck driver later."

Butterly's car was towed from the accident scene by Stingrey Transport & Recovery Inc. to a scrapyard on North Delaware Avenue in the shadow of the Betsy Ross Bridge. That was the last she saw of her 1997 Chrysler Cirrus or the valuables inside.

What went wrong here?

Ask Stingrey owner Reinaldo Mercado and he blames Francisco "Frank" Hernandez, owner of King Ranch Salvage.

Ask Hernandez and he blames Mercado.

Ask me, and I wonder: Didn't the city pass a law two years ago to crack down on knuckledraggers who prey on the dazed and injured at accident scenes?

Butterly tracked down Stingrey, which conveniently lists an old address and disconnected phone line on its towing receipts, and then found the scrap-yard. She repeatedly called to ask for valuables left in the car - her son's leather jacket, her daughter's iPod, compact discs, a rosary from Ireland and some jewelry - but only got the run-around from scrapyard employees.

Butterly took a cab out to the yard and saw her car through a locked fence but couldn't reach it. She called Hernandez several times and it's fair to say some heated words were exchanged.

Weeks later, Butterly said, Hernandez came clean about her car.

"The guy said to me, we crushed your car four days after we got it by accident," Butterly said. "I said, all this time, you had crushed my car?"

This seems like a good time for Mercado and Hernandez to take a shot at explaining themselves.

Mercado says he never had a problem with King Ranch Salvage.

"The salvage business is pretty hectic," he added. "Mistakes could happen like that."

Hernandez took a different approach to this dispute. Five times in one short conversation with me he denied every speaking with Butterly or knowing anything about her car.

Then he said: "She called me one day and I didn't understand what she was talking about. I didn't crush her vehicle."

Hold on there a minute.

Five times he claims to never have spoken to Butterly and then he brings up their little talk?

Hernandez runs a body shop in East Frankford and has closed down King Ranch Salvage.

"There were too many headaches," said Hernandez, who suggested that I pose my questions to his attorney when I asked why he told Butterly he had mistakenly crushed her car and then stopped answering her calls.

"If I told her that, it was a year ago. Why is she bringing this up eight months later?" Hernandez asked. "You know how many people call me? A lot of the time I let it go straight to voice mail."

Hernandez's attorney knows that trick, too. He didn't respond to my requests for comment.

That brings us to the city, which in June 2005 passed a law to regulate the chaotic industry of wreck-chasers who descend on accident scenes and battle to tow away the damaged cars. The Managing Director's Office is still working on how that law will work, including a list of approved towers.

Joe Grace, Mayor Street's spokesman, last week said the new regulations will include ways for unhappy towees like Butterly to complain to the Department of Licenses & Inspections. The Police Department will work with L&I to determine when a tow trucker needs to be pulled from the list.

Grace says the new law will be enforced "very shortly" on city streets while some details are worked out about how state police will call towers for accidents on state highways in the city.

"The purpose of the rotational system is clearly to bring order to a process that previously hasn't had enough order," Grace said.

Butterly will tell you that can't happen soon enough. *

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