MIAMI – A South Florida couple said they're lucky to be alive after a large rock crashed into their windshield on Interstate 95 Tuesday night.
"There was glass on me, glass on tom, glass everywhere , glass on the windshield," Julie Pronesti said.
Julie Pronesti said the incident happened while she and her husband were driving to dinner in Brickell.
"All of a sudden a rock came out from -- looked like from underneath the road and smashed into the windshield," Tom Pronesti said.
The couple said it was about 9 p.m. when they were driving southbound on the highway heading to Coya.
They exited toward downtown Miami and said something came from underneath the road, up into the air and landed directly on the glass windshield.
"It definitely came from under the roadway," Tom Pronesti said. "There is no overpass, there were no cars in front to kick up a rock and the rock was too big to be kicked up anyway. It was like the size of a softball, so it was definitely thrown from down below. I was OK, but it was so frightening and we continued to drive and she picked up the phone and called highway patrol."
For Julie Pronesti, the incident brought back memories from the mid-1980s.
"I was a prosecutor for 18 years. And I remember when this was a thing that for kicks," Julie Pronesti said. "They would throw large rocks at the cars."
Years later in 2002, a 47-year-old woman died after a football sized rock was thrown at her rented truck and hit her in the head. Though the Pronesti's weren't able to see exactly where or who the object came from, it's clear to them that they were one of the lucky ones.
"Had it hit higher up, the State Farm guy said it could've been a lot worse," Tom Pronesti said.
"Our lives could've been changed forever over this one moment," Julie Pronesti said.
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