Neighbour’s ute slams into house
She knew the man in the car wedged against her house, and she knew his wife, screaming, across the road.
All he wanted to do was apologise for smashing through her fence. Then he turned blue.
The sound of a car revving and then screaming jarred residents at the scene of a crash on a suburban street on the Kapiti Coast, north of Wellington, yesterday.
Emergency services closed the northern end of Parata St, Waikanae, after the single-vehicle crash about 10.05am.
Police said the driver of a ute that reversed from a driveway, straight across the road, through a fence and into a house suffered a medical emergency.
At the scene, police had marked out the movements of the ute, which was wedged under the deck of the two-storey house.
Its occupant, a woman who did not want to be named, said she was in her lounge when she heard revving, ‘‘and bang, the house shook’’.
She ‘‘shot outside’’ and saw the ute jammed up under her front deck.
She knew the man in the ute. He was conscious in the front seat, telling her ‘‘I just blacked out, I just blacked out’’, before he lost consciousness, she said.
‘‘All I could do was comfort him, and tell him an ambulance was coming, because I could see the postie was coming by and she was on the phone.’’
Before he blacked out, the man, in his 60s, was worried about damaging her fence, she said.
‘‘I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, worry about yourself, you’re in shock’, and then, of course, he started turning blue.’’
Seconds after the crash, neighbour Deb Gray rushed out of her home after hearing screams.
She spoke to a woman who told her that her husband was in the ute.
When she got there, he told her he thought he’d passed out. About five minutes later, he ‘‘looked a lot sicker’’.
For her daughter, Lily Gray, 11, the ‘‘massive’’ sound of the crash had left her shaken. ‘‘I thought someone was run over or someone got shot. I was freaking out.’’
The street was reopened about 11.30am. The man was taken to Wellington Hospital by the Life Flight rescue helicopter.
A spokesperson for Wellington Free Ambulance said the patient was in a serious condition in hospital.