On July 18, 2005 - looooooong story : )

Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 5:26 pm

When we bought this house the attached garage had been converted to a room. This means that on the other side of front wall of this room is the driveway and on the driveway sits our cars and on the in side of wall is where my computer desk sat.
Also, in the summer on days when Amanda doesn't have school or work, I let Randy take my car to work therefore his pickup truck is sitting in the driveway. This truck is a 1970 Dodge, not made of tin or fiberglass as the newer vehicles are but of good hard to damage steel.

On July 18,2005 just before 2 p.m. I had checked my email and done a little work on the rEcycle list I am a co-owner of then left the front of the room, going to the back part of the room where my craft area is located. I was sitting at my table minding my own business when I heard a really loud roar, a screech of tires trying to catch up with the speed of the engine and then a really loud crash.

I grabbed the cell phone and ran out front expecting to find a horrible crash in the street. What I found was a green Ford Contour pulling away from the backend of my husbands pickup truck....and the front of the pickup truck sitting about 2 feet inside the house....I had not even noticed the bulging wall before I headed out side.
I called 911 to report it and as I was talking to the police dispatcher the boy who had been in the car got out and went into his house across the street. A young girl was standing there screaming at him. He came back out, they got in the car and drove away as I was giving the dispatcher the license plate number.

To shorten this story down a bit.....
The girl was an unlicensed 14 yr old from a town about 20 miles from here. She had taken the car keys out of her Mom's purse and when Mom left for work she took the car for a joy ride. As her story goes...she found herself in front of the house across the street when she had car troubles (sounds fishy to me) Anyway, the 16 yr old unlicensed boy there and his friend decided to play "white knight" and help her. They pushed the car into their drive way, the 16 yr old started the engine...his story goes, he put it in reverse but the throttle was stuck full open and he couldn't stop it so it raced backwards out of his driveway into ours and crashed into the back bumper of the pickup.

When they drove away, they got down around the corner where the boy got out and ran back home thru the alley and broke into their house to hide.....like I didn't know who he was and where he lived??? After his Mom got home from work, they came over and he apologized and that is when he realized that the house had been damaged. The police officer came back to talk with Mom and son, they being hispanic Mom was yelling at the son in Spanish and didn't realize that the officer could understand what she said. He told us later that she was really giving me the riot act for being so stupid. But as soon as Dad got home, we never heard another word from them. Our insurance company told us that Dad refused to accept the fact that his son had caused the damage and put all the blame on the girl.

Over the next two months we found out that the car was uninsured and the people across the street refused to acknowledge any responsibilty or even report it to their insurance.
Our auto insurance paid for the damages to the truck, there weren't many since it is made of steel...minus a $250 deductible. Our home owners insurance paid for the rebuilding of this room. The Mom is paying $100 a month to our insurance companies to reimburse them.....the house repairs alone were $7800 so she will be paying on that forever.

Almost two months to the day after waiting for the insurance company to send us a contractor we felt we could trust, the rebuilding of the room was completed. Only took them from 8 a.m. that Monday to 3p.m. Wednesday.
Because the paneling that was on the walls couldn't be matched (it was 30 yrs old), they took it all down and we asked for regular walls (sheetrock,texture and paint). The ceiling had to be redone too and since the opening between this room and the living room had trim that had to be taken down, that damaged the ceiling in the livingroom and one wall there... the livingroom ceiling was completely redone and the whole room repainted.

The funny thing about this is, when the construction crew tore out the front wall, they found the original garage door still there. The previous home owner had her son do the work, he nailed some sheets of foam to the inside of the garage door and covered the whole thing with paneling. The demolition crew had a good laugh at that.

After the room was finished Randy built us a book case 8' long and 8' tall and mounted it to the front wall.....I do not want to be sitting there again. My computer is now in the middle of the room instead. We had been hoping to redo this room someday but it just never got to the top of our long to do list.

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glendann wrote on Tue Jul 18, 2006 5:48 pm:

Oh my Gosh,That could have been so much worse than it was .Your Guardian Angel was for sure watching over you.

jubabe296 wrote on Tue Jul 18, 2006 6:00 pm:

WOW!! Toni!! I would not want to be sitting there anymore either!! The thought of it is very frightening!! The bookcase you described sounds beautiful. The good thing I guess is that you got your room remodeled!! It is so frustrating when people won't take responsibility for their actions!!ARGHHHHH! I wonder if the former owners know their son left the garage door there when he built the room?lol! That must have been a funny shock!!lol!

Gardenstew wrote on Tue Jul 18, 2006 9:57 pm:

Eeek what a story Toni. SO glad nobody was hurt and that you got everything settled eventually. I would have found it quite amusing as well to find the garage door still there, it's like sweeping dust under the rug :)