A car sits in the roof of Scott Penney's home in Marlborough, Mass. after it was driven off an elevated parking lot and crashed into his roof, which is about the same level as the lot.
MARLBOROUGH, Mass. --The bang Scott Penney heard at a Fourth of July cookout wasn't fireworks; it was the sound of a car crashing through the roof of his home.
Penney was preparing to host a backyard barbecue when a beige 1992 Ford Taurus drove off an elevated parking lot and crashed into his home's roof, which was about the same level as the lot.
Penney, a downstairs tenant in the home, heard the noise from the accident but didn't see what had happened until he went around the two-family house.
"Then I saw the car in the middle of my roof," Penney told the MetroWest Daily News of Framingham.
The car came to rest with its hood sticking out the roof. The vehicle came to rest on a supporting wall and did not fall into the home's living area.
Arriving firefighters climbed a ladder and helped the car's driver get out. No one was injured. Penney's girlfriend had been inside at the time, and the upstairs tenants had been away.
The driver, Shirley Elder, is in her 70s and had been alone at the time of the accident. She refused medical treatment.
"The (driver) had parked her car across the street, cut her wheel, backed up and stepped on the gas," said Jeremy Cardin, a nearby resident who witnessed the accident. "It was just like a catcher's mitt as she hit the roof. She went right between two parked cars and there wasn't even a scratch on them."
"She thought she had her foot on the brake and hit the gas," police Officer David Garceau said. "The car quickly accelerated, went into a 180-degree turn, launched over the wall and backed into the house."
While emergency personnel were still at the scene, friends began to arrive for Penney's barbecue.
"I told you there would be fireworks," he told his guests.
Boston Globe.
