LI Family Picks Up Pieces After Truck Plows Into Their House, Sparking Fire

A Long Island family spent the day trying to salvage what they could from their home, after a pickup truck drove into their house Tuesday evening, cutting a natural gas line and sparking a large fire.

Authorities say 35-year-old Anthony Capuano was driving the truck that crashed into the Selden home. He has been arrested and charged with driving while impaired by drugs and second-degree reckless endangerment.

Diane Cosgrove was inside the home with her two children when the truck barreled into their house.

"Everything came flying out of the cabinets and shattered on the kitchen floor," Cosgrove said, "You feel like it’s a nightmare, like you’re watching a movie."

Her husband, Michael Cosgrove, a Selden firefighter, had been away at a training session when he answered the fire call, thinking at first it was a neighbor’s house until he arrived on the scene.

"I realized the fire was on the wrong side of the street for that address," he said. "I said 'that’s not my neighbor’s house, that’s my house on fire!'"

Cosgrove’s horror quickly turned to relief when he saw that his wife and two children had escaped unhurt.

"My wife is the real hero here," he said. "She was the one who scooped everyone up, got everyone out."

After the crash, neighbors say Capuano stood by and watched the fire until he was arrested. Witnesses said he seemed intoxicated.

According to Capuano's attorney, Anthony Scheller, Capuano, a construction worker, has an extensive criminal background.

"He’s glad that nobody was injured in this," Scheller said. "He’s obviously innocent until proven guilty, so he’s adamantly denying these charges."   

With much of their home now gutted, the Cosgrove’s are trying to explain what happened to their children, while also trying and understand it themselves.

"You usually show up to other people’s nightmares and now its happening to you," Michael Cosgrove said.

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