June Webb will be 88 in a couple of weeks’ time and she is still ticking off firsts in her life, but having a vehicle drive into her home was one the Shepparton resident was hoping to avoid.
“I was just waiting for A Current Affair. Five to seven,” she said.
“I’d had my tea and I was just sitting doing my knitting — and bang!
“(I said) ‘Oh, I didn’t think we were going to get thunder tonight’ and then another bang and then I opened the door and I thought, ‘fire’. It was all the bright light shining in off the car, I suppose.”
It was the night of Monday, May 29 and a Holden dual cab four-wheel drive utility had crossed a neighbour’s garden bed across the street from her, mounted the gutter outside her home, driven over Mrs Webb’s garden beds and fence before slamming into a corner of her Wentworth St house.
“It’s a double brick wall, but he went through the both,” she said.
“Sparks were flying everywhere.
“Then the smell of it. I don't know if it was engine oil or water, heat or what, but the smell was so strong.”
Mrs Webb said it was simply good fortune she was not sitting in the part of the house the car struck.
“I’ve got a telly out there and I often sit out there,” she said.
“Not a nice feeling.”
Mrs Webb said the neighbours, whose garden the vehicle had just crossed, rang police and ran to assist her.
She said the driver of the vehicle was walking around outside the house when she looked out.
Victoria Police Sergeant Mark Phillips said a Shepparton man in his 50s had a suspected medical episode while driving in Hovell Cres before his vehicle mounted the kerb and struck into the house.
He was treated at the scene for minor injuries and will undertake a licence review.
No charges have been laid.
Mrs Webb is awaiting a structural assessment of her house and for the power to be reconnected.
The incident follows hers and family members’ properties being damaged during last October’s floods, and she has a message for the universe, and drivers in particular.
“Don’t do it again. Don’t give me any more trouble. That’s enough. A lot of cleaning up,” she said.