UPDATED: Speeding car knocks down Pitt student on Fifth Avenue

A car speeding the wrong way down Fifth Avenue at Bigelow Boulevard struck and critically… A car speeding the wrong way down Fifth Avenue at Bigelow Boulevard struck and critically injured Pitt graduate student Jennifer Lynn Burroughs in front of the Pittsburgh Athletic Association last night.

Port Authority police spotted the gray Chrysler sedan driving in the bus-only lane on Fifth around Craft Avenue. After a brief chase, police lost sight of the car, which apparently lost control and crashed through newspaper dispensers and a garbage can before pinning Burroughs to the sidewalk near the northeastern corner of Bigelow and Fifth around 10 p.m.

“We walked around the front of the car, and all of a sudden a guy in a tuxedo said, ‘Oh my, there’s someone under here,'” Chad Church, of Melwood Avenue, said, recounting the scene he saw moments after the collision.

Church was one of the first people to pull over his own car and attempt to help at the scene of the accident.

The paramedics arrived five to 10 minutes after four people tried unsuccessfully to help the injured woman, Church said.

Burroughs is a 25-year-old student in Pitt’s Katz graduate school of business. She is currently in intensive care at UPMC Presbyterian hospital and listed in critical condition.

The Chrysler, which was stolen on Wednesday in Highland Park, had come to rest on the sidewalk near the front steps of the PAA, facing the opposite direction of the flow of traffic on Fifth Avenue.

Burroughs suffered multiple visible lacerations on her abdomen, leg and head, Church said, and the drivers of the car had apparently fled the scene.

“The drivers were long gone, and nobody knew she was under there. It was three or four minutes before anybody recognized she was under that car,” Church added. “It wasn’t gory, the scene, but it was as graphic as I’ve ever seen.”

Moments later, Police caught up with the three men who were in the car and arrested and charged 19 year old Christopher Titus, of Garfield, with aggravated assault, fleeing police, and receiving stolen property.

Another car parked on Fifth Avenue between Bigelow Boulevard and Lytton Street received front bumper damage when it was struck by a garbage can.

News Editor D.Clark Denison contributed to this report.