Truck crashes into family home
Published 5:00 am Wednesday, March 18, 2009
A Brookhaven family’s evening television-watching session wasstartlingly interrupted Monday night when a vehicle left BrookhavenStreet and plowed into their home.
James and Rhonda Womack, who live in a rented house near therailroad tracks at 447 Brookhaven St., were surprised when theylearned what they thought was thunder from a passing storm cloudwas actually a Ford F-250 wrecking into their garage.
The truck, driven by Lincoln County’s Kevin Dunnaway, bulldozedthree vehicles, two four-wheelers and pushed one of the vehiclesthrough the garage wall and into the house, said Brookhaven PoliceDepartment Det. Frank Leggett. Dunnaway’s truck also took out allthree of the open garage’s support columns, later causing a sectionof the home’s roof to collapse early Tuesday morning.
The accident occurred around 10:30 p.m. Monday, and the roofcollapsed around 6 a.m. Tuesday. No one was hurt in the accident orthe collapse.
“I really couldn’t comprehend it at first,” said Rhonda Womack,a teacher in the Hazlehurst City School District. “My husband has atruck, but I saw two trucks.”
Womack’s daughter, 23-year-old Latoya Bradley, was calling it anight at Mississippi College when she said her mother called toinform her of the accident. Bradley said she arrived in Brookhavenat dawn the next morning to check on her family, just in time tosee the garage roof collapse.
“We were talking and we heard this loud creaking sound,” shesaid. “We all looked over automatically and heard it again. Istarted screaming, ‘Get out of the house! It’s going to collapse!’Then the roof just fell over.”
Leggett said vehicle versus house incidents do happen, but areuncommon. He said both family and driver were lucky that no one wasinjured.
“Had he not struck the car, it would have been real bad,”Leggett said. “The car is what slowed him down.”
Leggett said Dunnaway was not impaired, not sick and not takingany medication. Leggett said Dunnaway reported to officers he musthave blacked out behind the wheel after crossing the railroadtracks.
Leggett said there were no skid marks on the road or in theWomack’s yard to indicate any attempts to stop or correct thevehicle’s course.
“He guesses he passed out, and that’s what it looks like,”Leggett said. “He never hit the brakes. He really couldn’t believeit happened. He was more dazed and confused than anything.”
Rhonda Womack was in relatively good spirits after the accident,happy to escape the accident injury-free.
“The main thing is everyone is fine – it’s a material loss andit can be replaced,” she said.
James Womack, however, was still smarting Tuesday.
The accident destroyed his Ford Mustang drag-racing car, whichhe said he had been building for eight years and finished lastWednesday. He had planned to take it to the drag strip nextweek.