A Staten Island man died early Sunday morning while trying to back his SUV out of a tight parking space in a pub parking lot. Oleg Kantarovich had gone outside to pull the car around for his wife, who was celebrating her 30th birthday, so that she wouldn't get caught in the rain. Police say he was leaning out of the front door of his 2007 Audi SUV as he backed up because it may have been difficult to see through the tinted side window.
"Instead of hitting the brake, he hit the accelerator," a source tells the Staten Island Advance. The car lurched and spun into a tree, ejecting Kantarovich and hitting a fence. The source says, "The body was suspended between the car and the fence." Kantarovich suffered massive internal injuries and died instantly. Sadly, his wife found her husband twenty minutes later when she came looking for him. It's not known if Kantarovich, who had been drinking, was drunk, but according to the Daily News, he had two convictions for drunken driving.