Driver killed after crashing through wall
I used to live on the 28th floor of this apartment building in Houston (back in 1994-95). So it was strange reading this tragic story in today’s Houston Chronicle:
A man died after his car crashed through the wall of a downtown parking garage and landed on the roof of an adjacent building Monday night, officials said.
No other other injuries were reported.
Authorities did not immediately identify the victim, said Assistant Chief Omero Longoria, Houston Fire Department spokesman.
The crash was reported about 6:30 p.m.
Authorities said a Ford Mustang punched through a brick wall on the fifth floor of the parking garage at Houston House Apartments in the 1600 block of Fannin.
“It appears the vehicle was backing into a parking space,” said Houston police Sgt. L. Lefler, accident investigation supervisor, “The driver lost control, crashed through the wall and fell 41 feet to the building below.”
Wow. My parking spot in that building was on the 8th floor (the first 8 floors of the building are parking garage — apartments start on the 9th floor).
There are only two buildings behind the Houston House — one is the Zydeco Diner, but that building is too far for a car to fall on (unless it was doing 40-50 mph when it went through the wall).
I can’t remember exactly what type of business was in the building that was adjacent to the Houston House — storage or auto-repair, maybe? But that must have been the building the car landed on.
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UPDATE — A reader makes a correction to the Chronicle story:
Here’s a fact that Chron.com (and all the other news providers) got WRONG: the car broke through the wall NOT at the 5th floor level of the garage, but at the 7TH floor level. It then fell 5 stories onto a 2-story building next door, so I guess the 5-story drop is the source of the confusion.
How do I know this? I live in the Houston House apartments, and I saw the hole from the inside because I park on the 8th floor level.
UPDATE II — ABC 13 in Houston reports that the car landed on law offices owned by Larry Hysinger, who climbed a ladder to help:
“That thing was so flat, I couldn’t tell it was a convertible,” he said. “We were looking for signs of people and we couldn’t flat get into that thing at all.”
How fast would you have to be going to crash through a wall? I would think that if you were backing into a space, there wouldn’t be enough distance to be going very fast. It’s not like one of those situations were someone jams on the brakes and instead hits the gas pedal.
Left by kma on June 12th, 2007 at 1:35 pm