Woman escapes tragedy after car barrels into home

An elderly driver crashed into the wall of a Manoa house where an 85-year-old wheelchair-bound woman usually sits, and narrowly missed the woman’s daughter, who was in her van in the driveway.

"My mother normally is sitting in a wheelchair there or an easy chair, attached to an oxygen tank, but she went to the bathroom," said Nuela Mead, 59, pointing to the contents of her mother’s studio apartment, laid bare after the front wall and windows were demolished. "She wouldn’t have been able to get up."

The accident occurred at about 9:15 a.m. Thursday on a driveway off Puhala Rise and was the first of two Oahu accidents involving elderly drivers crashing into houses.

Neighbor Erica Fontaine said, "I heard the car accelerating down the driveway."

She said the driver was an 80-year-old woman who told her she was visiting a friend but had come down the wrong driveway. The woman complained her chest hurt, possibly from the air bag deploying, and was dazed but coherent, Fontaine said.

She was taken in stable condition to the hospital.

Mead herself narrowly escaped getting hit as she was in her van, just about to leave for work.

"I saw something fly by in my rearview mirror," she said. "When I got out of my car, I saw the destruction. It’s hard to believe."

She added, "I’m thankful I didn’t back out, or she would have hit me. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it."

She said her mother’s reaction was "What the hell happened?" as she looked at the gaping hole where a wall once stood.

The car had continued beyond the driveway, down the front lawn and also hit a kennel. The dog escaped injury.

No brake marks were visible, and the car came to rest facing the house, Fontaine said.

Residents said the woman might have been trying to reverse out of the driveway and may have had the car in drive instead of reverse or mistakenly stepped on the accelerator instead of the brakes.

"She had to have been a little confused," Mead said. "She had to have stepped on the gas."

Firefighters helped shore up the corner of the house where the car had knocked out a support beam, said Fire Department spokes­man Capt. Terry Seelig, as well as hit the front door and a motorbike.

Mead’s husband went for supplies to temporarily repair the wall.

Another elderly woman, reportedly in her 80s, drove into a garage door at about 11 a.m. on Haiku Plantation Drive.

She was taken to the hospital in serious condition.

The garage door was broken, and there was some damage to a garage wall, Seelig said.