‘There’s a car in the bed’
An airborne van gets embedded into a house in Newburg.
You may have seen cars crashed into houses, but rarely like this.
Early Saturday, a minivan launched into a home in Newburg in Ozaukee County, embedding wheels-first, several feet off ground, like a toy car stuck onto a birthday cake.
Miraculously, neither the driver nor the man in the bedroom was hurt.
Annette Bienlein, 73, just happened to be in the bathroom when she heard the bang about 3 a.m. Her 78-year-old husband Ken was still in bed, but she couldn’t open the door to the bedroom; the impact had shifted the frame of the whole room.
“Finally, we got it open,” she said. “He was pretty shook up, not himself. He said, ‘There’s a car in the bed.’ I could see the wheels. It was on my side. I’d have been dead.”
Ken was covered in oil, though, because the Mazda minivan had struck a 4-foot rock retaining wall on its way up and that tore the engine and transmission apart, said Jamon Ingelse, with Lanser Garage & Towing of Belgium, who later removed the vehicle.
“The Sheriff ’s Office had called and given a detailed description,” he said, “But when I got here to the scene, I could still hardly wrap my head around it.
“We’ve pulled lots of cars, even semis, out of buildings, but never any that are completely off the ground.”
The driver, 35-year-old Alva Richards of Waubeka, was still in the driver’s seat, unconscious or in some sort of altered state, when a sheriff ’s deputy arrived.
When he came to, he removed his seat belt and fell or jumped about 15 feet to the ground.
Richards told a deputy he smokes marijuana daily and eats cannabinoid oil gummies to control a seizure disorder. Inside the van, police found marijuana and a grinder.
Richards is now charged with second-degree recklessly endangering safety and possession of marijuana, second offense, both felonies.
Annette Bienlein said Richards, who said he was on his way to work in Germantown, came to her house a day later and apologized.
She said she accepted it and feels bad for him.
“He seems like a very nice guy. He’s got a wife and three kids. I told him just do something good with your life,” she said.
Richards is free on $5,000 bail. His next court appearance is set for August.
Bienlein said repairs to her home of more than 20 years are expected to take two or three months.
In the meantime, she said, they are spending nights in a hotel and retelling the story with remarkable calm.
“A week helps,” she said with a chuckle.