Janette Photos
The driver of an apparently speeding truck plowed into a car, then rammed into a lovingly rehabbed house in the Edgewood neighborhood Sunday night.
Neighbors Nathan and Rigel Janette sent in these photos and this report:
According to neighbors and firefighters on the scene, here’s what happened:
A little before 8 p.m., a pickup truck with two to three occupants was driving northbound on Ella Grasso Boulevard at a high speed. Near the intersection of Elm Street, the pickup struck a white car from behind, grazed along the left side of that vehicle, and then continued about 25 yards down the road.
At that point, the truck went off the road to the right, smashing through the fence of the corner house and knocking the entire side porch off.
The truck stopped in the debris. The house was occupied by some members of the family that owns it. (The same house was burglarized for the copper heating parts when they first moved in—click here for that story.) No one in the house was injured Sunday night.
The car that was struck had four occupants, one adult and three children. All were taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The occupants of the pickup tried to flee the seen; one was seen handcuffed in the rear of a police car.
There were no known injuries to the occupants of the truck, which is incredible given the violence of the impact.
At first glance, the house’s entire side porch is destroyed. The crash took out some of the columns supporting the upper porch on the Elm Street side. The main body of house looks to be intact, but it’s hard to tell from the debris.
(Police spokesman Officer David Hartman said of the accident Sunday night: “A pick-up struck a jeep. There weren’t any major injuries. The porch was torn from the house.”
(Hartman was at the scene of the accident. He said he didn’t know of any arrests. Police weren’t able at first to identify who was driving, Hartman said.)
The house used to be owned by locally famous barbecue man Joe Grate before he retired and moved.