Daughter feared the worst in crash
A car parked in the driveway was all that saved Sylvia Lawrence when a car smashed through a fence and into the bedroom wall, her daughter says.
Sylvia and David Lawrence were woken early yesterday morning when a ute crashed through a brick wall, into a car parked outside their Otumoetai Rd house and then into the wall, killing the driver.
“I think mum is lucky to be alive. If that [car] had not have been parked where it was, she’d be dead,” said daughter Susan Hoonhout, who lives with her husband Victor next door to her parents.
Hoonhout had loaned her mother the Mazda 101, which was parked near the front door of their house, and said she had no doubt that the car saved her mother’s life. The crumpled wreck absorbed most of the impact.
The wheels of the car went through the bedroom wall and tyre marks from the upturned ute were left on the home’s front guttering.
The impact of the crash sheared a road sign from its base, threw a bus stop sign two houses away and flung bricks from the fence up to 10m away and into the house where the Lawrences were sleeping.
Hoonhout said she was expecting the worst when she ran over to her parents’ house after her husband woke her and told her what happened.
“It was just carnage,” she said. “I was just worried about getting in the house and checking if my mum was okay.
“My husband was out there with the guys in the cars to see if they were okay. It’s one of those things. The shock probably sunk in later,” she said.
Ms Hoonhout said there had been a lot of crashes in the area this year.
The house was located near the intersection with Glenn Terrace and the couple estimated there had been at least one significant crash every two months.