Our 4th of July began with a BANG!

As you can see from the first photo, we live in a small townhouse apartment complex on the elbow of a sharp turn. Almost daily, we hear screeching tires as cars attempt to take the turn way too quickly.

Yesterday morning, I was upstairs getting ready when I heard the SCREECH of tires followed by a quick succession of BANG… BANG… BANG… and then our complex shuddered. I knew something bad happened. Debbie and I ran outside to discover, along with our neighbors, that a car had popped the curb, careened through our small courtyard area and then slammed into the complex adjacent to ours.

Fortunately the young teenage couple in the car only suffered very minor injuries and no one else was hurt. Supposedly, the young man driving the car passed out and his foot pressed down on the accelerator. The girl next to him tried to grab the steering wheel, but to no avail.

I’m not sure how fast the car was traveling, but it was going pretty fast. As you can see from the following pictures, the car threw wood from our courtyard fence into the tree and our carport. And a large piece of wood punctured the windshield. The passenger was very fortunate!

What is disconcerting to Debbie and me is that our children play out front all the time. They use that courtyard area everyday. Our neighbor also smokes his cigarettes quite frequently out there. He was out there smoking just two minutes before the car crashed through.

This last picture shows the trajectory that the car traveled. If anyone was in that courtyard, this entire incident would have had a much more tragic ending.