Fence Stops Car’s Plunge Into Channel
A car driven by a 19-year-old North Hollywood woman went off the Hollywood Freeway and partly into a flood control channel during heavy rains Tuesday morning, authorities said.
The driver was not injured and there were no passengers in the car.
Wendy Anna Juarez was traveling north when her car began to hydroplane about 9:15 a.m., California Highway Patrol Officer Robert Stegemann said. Her Ford Thunderbird slid down the freeway embankment and crashed through a storm channel fence in Valley Plaza Park, near Laurel Grove and Vanowen Street.
The front of the vehicle went into the water, but the chain-link fence prevented the car from falling the rest of the way into the rapidly moving channel, Stegemann said.
“She was driving too fast for the conditions,” he said. “She’s a very lucky person. The fence acted like a big old catcher’s mitt.”
Juarez immediately got out of the car and was in a friend’s vehicle on the freeway when authorities arrived, Stegemann said.
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