Who threw that shell?
A Florida woman suffered a bloody but superficial cut to her forehead after a flying turtle smashed through the window of her daughter’s car on the highway Wednesday, in a bizarre incident that usually only happens in the video game Mario Kart.
The incident happened on Florida’s Interstate 95, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports.
The 71-year-old woman was sitting in the passenger’s seat when the turtle shell came crashing through the windshield, striking her in the head, the paper reports.
Her daughter immediately pulled over and called 911, thinking it was a rock. Another motorist also pulled over to lend a hand.
“Something just came through the windshield and hit my mom in the head,” the woman told the dispatcher. “She’s got so much blood coming out of her head.”
The other motorist inspected the car while the daughter reported the incident.
“There’s a turtle in there,” he said in the background of the call.
“A turtle!” the daughter said. “An actual turtle?”
It was an actual turtle, Port Orange police spokesman officer Andre Fleming later confirmed. The exact size and species remains unknown.
“I swear to God this lady has the worst luck of anything,” the daughter said on the call.
Authorities suspect the turtle was crossing the road when another vehicle struck it, launching it into the air in front of the mother-daughter duo’s car.
The 71-year-old was treated in hospital but was not seriously hurt.
The incident echoed Nintendo’s popular Mario Kart games, in which drivers try to knock one another out of the race by hurling turtle shells.
It also wasn’t the first time that Florida police have seen such an incident. Another turtle crashed through a windshield on Interstate 4 in 2016.
Officials say Wednesday’s turtle-missile survived the incident with a few scratches to its shell. It was later released into the woods at the scene.
—With files from The Associated Press
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