Shock as 4x4 car crashes into home
Lucky Escape: Marshall Price with the damage to his garden after a driver ploughed into his house.
A Smalley family have spoken of their shock after a car crashed into their house just before Christmas.
Marshall Price, 76, was woken just after 12midnight on the day before Christmas Eve when the Mitsubishi estate smashed into his front porch.
“What a Christmas present!” he said.
“It’s a shock to the system – my grandson ran downstairs and shouted, ‘I think someone is trying to break into the house!”
Mr Price’s 17-year-old grandson Bradley helped the driver from the vehicle while Mr Price rang the emergency services.
The driver of the car was bleeding from the mouth.
The 4x4 drove off Heanor Road, over three grass verges, a footpath, a service road and smashed through an established 6ft tall conifer hedge, a 5ft hawthorne hedge and a 3ft-tall brick wall before hitting a brick porch and leaving a 4ft-long crack and breaking the windows.
Mr Price said: “If anyone had been walking past that house he would have killed them.
“He missed the end of my car by about six inches - it’s amazing.”
Mr Price, who is registered disabled, estimates the cost of the damage will run into the thousands.
He paid tribute to the police and ambulance service.
Police removed the car with a winch and towed it away with a recovery lorry.
The damage to the porch will have to be made good and the UPVC window and door frames will have to be replaced.
Mr Price, a retired long-distance lorry driver, has lived at the house for 28 years with his wife Margaret, 66.
A 47-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of driving with excess alcohol and is due to appear before Derby Magistrates on January 11.
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Weather for Ilkeston
Wednesday 22 May 2013
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