Blind Grandmother Thankful To Be Alive After Car Crashed Through Home into Favorite Chair
Car accidents are sadly a fairly common occurrence. Fender-benders and more serious incidents happen constantly, adding to the freeway and street congestion that many of us face on our daily commutes.
While cars hitting signposts, curbs and other cars isn’t all that unusual, a car crashing into a house is still quite surprising. It takes a lot of force and major miscalculations in judgment to ram a vehicle into someone’s home.
And yet, it still happens. It happened just recently to a woman named Joan Blackwood, who lives in Littlehampton, England. Surprisingly, she didn’t even realize it had happened, and it took several people showing up on the scene to explain that a car had hit her home for her to realize it.
On Monday, Jan. 7, at around 7:30 in the morning, someone drove their car into the side of Blackwood’s house. While the car did not end up sitting in her living room, it did break through the wall and scatter her belongings.
But Blackwood, who’s had only 10% vision since 1993, didn’t know anything had happened, and was surprised when, 15 minutes after the incident, an unfamiliar man showed up at her front door and tried to explain what had transpired.
“I thought he was trying to tell me there was going to be a big bang,” she said, according to the Eastbourne Herald. “I thought, ‘okay, when is it?’, said thanks for letting me know, and went back to bed.”
Despite the ineffective explanation, there was a 2-by-4-foot hole in the woman’s sitting room wall. Her CD collection was scattered, furniture was broken and the chair she habitually sat in was thrown from its spot.
Next, the cops showed up. This time, they took her to the sitting room, and she knew something had happened.
“At first, I thought: ‘what am I walking on?’ It was all the rubble,” she said. She realized what had happened, and acknowledged that there was a very large hole in her flat wall.
“I was awake the whole time; I had the radio on in the morning,” she explained. “I didn’t hear a thing. “The next thing I know, I was in shock. I was shaking by the time the police left.” Blackwood called her son Michael, who raced over. He later said the car was towed away by around 9:30 a.m.
The scariest part of the incident is that she had a favorite chair she spent much of her time in, and that chair had been damaged in the accident. If she had been in that chair, she might not be around to tell the tale.
Blackwood is thankful the accident didn’t have a different ending. “If it had been later on in the day, I dread to think what could have happened.”
“There is a big gaping hole facing the main road, so anyone could sneak in there during the night,” Michael Blackwood said.
Thankfully, Blackwood wasn’t hurt and the wall was soon patched, protecting her from the elements and anyone who might be tempted to poke around. If it hadn’t been for the policemen who explained the situation to her, she might not have known what had happened for quite some time.
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