Whoa

Had a car towed this morning to George's, and the tow truck driver told me stories.

He works for the Thomas Township Volunteer Fire Department. He told me he was one of the first on the scene at my house when a car went airborne and - he said - hit the roof of our house. He said it was a 16 year old, with two passengers, in a car he had just been given for his birthday. The two passengers survived with relatively minor injuries, but the driver died. As the truck operator put it, "He died on top of your house."

OK.

When Jon first started making friends at school one of his classmates said "Oh. You live in that house where somebody took out the garage." We had noticed some new framing around the newer-looking door - 2X4s looked fresh.

I queried the tow truck driver about the facts: Did the gas main on the corner of the garage get hit? Where did the car land? How was the garage damaged? How did the car drive into the garage and not hit the huge pine tree in front? Who was the kid?

He said the gas was not damaged because the car flew higher than the main. He said the car finally landed between the light post and the front door. He said the entire front of the garage was history, (and I assumed the roof was, too). He said the out-of-control car traveled between the neighbor's house and the tree. He said the kid attended Heritage High.

Whoa.

I told Linda, and then the rest of the "at-home" family at dinner, and we speculated on how it could possibly have happened. How did the car get airborne? How did it manage to wind between the tree and the neighbor's wall? How did it flip from the roof onto the front yard? We scanned the front yard, the spaces and the clearings, potential launches and evidence of damage.

Jeremy got online and discovered some answers. The car was brand new. The young man was beloved. The pictures show the roof of the garage unharmed - the car had not flown that high. But it did fly. The driver was traveling at 110 mph, lost control, skidded accross two lawns before lobbing from the small hill on the side of the house and catching air into the garage door, then bouncing off the front bricks and landing upside down on the lawn. The driver died instantly. One passenger was airlifted for severe facial injuries. The other passenger was able to walk away.

Don't drive fast.

Read a memorial here. Watch a memorial video here.