Car crashes into Pond Park garden

A young woman was fortunate to walk away with only minor injuries after crashing her car into a house on Pond Park Road. Her vehicle crashed through two hedges and travelled the width of a football field and hit the house before coming to a rest on its roof. US1442-534cd Picture: Cliff Donaldson

Householder Harry McKeown had been dozing off in the living room in front of the television when he heard a loud bang.

When he looked outside he saw a white vehicle lying upside down which had careered from the main road before crashing into his garden.

At first, Mr. McKeown thought a bomb had gone off in his son’s white van.

The white Corsa that crashed through two hedges and travelled the width of a football field before it hit the house

When he got out of his house, he spotted a male and a female on the driveway.

Believing that he was being confronted by joy riders, Mr McKeown then shouted, “What the hell’s going on?” and ran back into the house to waken his son and asked him to come out with him to help out.

As his son was getting his clothes on, Mr McKeown answered the door to find the woman standing shaking and covered in blood.

Mr. McKeown believed that the other male was not at the scene at this stage.

Mr McKeown believes that the car drove through the length of a football field before striking the side wall of his house and resting upside down in his garden.

“When I looked out at first I was convinced that a bomb had gone off underneath my son’s van,” he said.

“I believed that there was some sort of explosion. I really could not understand what was happening.

“All I saw was the wheels of a white vehicle upside down. “

The woman, believed to be in her 20’s, suffered only minor injuries including stitches to her foot.

“The car must have been airborne at some stage to land where it did,” Mr McKeown said.

He called the emergency services who arrived shortly before the girl’s parents.

“The girl was bleeding, she had cuts to her hands and her lip,” he said.

“It could have been a very different story.

“She was very lucky that she got out alive.

“If the car had crashed differently there is no way that the girl was getting out of the car alive.”

Some years ago, soldiers driving along the Pond Park Road had struck the pillar at Mr McKeown’s house.

But the crash at the weekend was a lot more frightening and Mr. McKeown said soemthing needed to be done about traffic on the road.

“I know that a lot of residents have complained about the traffic along this road.

“It is often said that it is like a racing track and there is a fatality waiting to happen.”