July 15, 2010

Car crashes through mobile home

      Seventeen-year-old Deanna Overstreet and a friend were in Overstreet's newly redecorated room and called her mother in to talk late Tuesday.  Seconds after Stephanie O'Haver stepped into her daughter's bedroom, a loud boom shook the mobile home. The power went out, and windows shattered.  Through the doorway they saw a rush of debris as the living room ceiling collapsed with enough force to scatter furniture and splinter through the floor.   "If I hadn't called my mom into my room, she'd be dead," Overstreet said.  They thought a tree had fallen and crushed their home. But it wasn't a tree; it was a car.  A driver lost control of her car and smashed through the mobile home and struck a second residence in the Glendale Mobile Home Park, south of County Line Road and west of State Road 135, at 10:40 p.m. Tuesday, said Jim Engmark, a spokesman for the White River Township Fire Department.  The second mobile home was barely damaged, except for the bottom section of the home where the car struck.  Donna Eden, 64, Indianapolis, driver of the 2009 Toyota Camry, told police she was going about 90 mph at the time of the accident but couldn't slow down because her accelerator was stuck, according to a Johnson County Sheriff's Office accident report.  The 2009 Camry model was among the thousands of cars Toyota recalled because of problems with sudden, uncontrollable acceleration.  Sheriff's deputies have the Toyota Camry until they figure out who is responsible for testing the vehicle to see what, if anything, happened to the accelerator, Chief Deputy Doug Cox said.  Deputies might need to check for the problem themselves, or it may be the responsibility of the insurance company, he said.  They have no reason to doubt the driver's story, Cox said. Sheriff's deputies saw no signs of alcohol or drug use that could have impaired her driving, he said.  "One way or another, we'll try to get to the bottom of it," Cox said.

         O'Haver was in the living room minutes before the accident.  She was cleaning and picking up; her daughter recently had redecorated her room and moved old furniture and knickknacks into the living room.  She was about to step out of her daughter's room when the accident happened.  "It felt like a hurricane or tornado," she said. "It just, the whole house just rumbled."  O'Haver shouted at the children to leave through the front of the house.  "My daughter, she was screaming and crying and frantic," O'Haver said. "I kind of went numb. I was just in a state of shock."  The accident destroyed most of their possessions, except for a flat-screen television that was left unscathed on a far wall of the home, Hart said. The car even destroyed his mother's bed.  "If she'd been sleeping, she'd be gone," Hart said.

         Eden told police she was driving south down a hill on Chessie Drive and was unable to stop at a stop sign at County Line Road.  She sped past County Line Road and onto a drive leading into Glendale Mobile Home Park, and the vehicle went airborne when it hit an embankment, the report said.  The car severed a gas line, causing a gas leak, and firefighters had to evacuate about 40 people from the mobile home park, Engmark said. No one was allowed back into their homes for about 90 minutes, while the gas company fixed the leak, Engmark said.  Eden complained of back pain and was taken to Community Hospital South in Indianapolis to be examined, Engmark said.  No one else was injured except for a firefighter, who twisted his ankle when the floor of the mobile home collapsed beneath him, Engmark said.

         On Wednesday, the family was sorting through the wreckage of the home, which was surrounded by yellow police tape. A gaping hole was torn through the center of the home, and furniture, clothes, pictures and pieces of wood had spilled from the opening and were scattered on the ground.  "It looks like a bomb went off," said Christopher Hart, 23, Overstreet's brother.  Glendale Mobile Home Park management is letting the family stay in a vacant mobile home on the property.  Meanwhile, they are trying to salvage what they can and hoping insurance will cover the cost of repairs and the new furniture and clothing they will need to buy, mother Stephanie O'Haver said.  (Reprinted with permission from the Daily Journal)
 

           

          
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