6 Treated for Injuries After 2-Car Collision

Six people were injured Thursday when a two-car collision on Telephone Road sent one of the vehicles through a wall and blocked traffic in the area for more than an hour.

The 3:30 p.m. accident involved an eastbound car driven by Eric Rettburg, 27, of Canoga Park and a car driven by Charlotte Righder, 77, of Ventura who was apparently attempting to turn left from the westbound lane of Telephone Road at Clinton Avenue, police said.

One of the drivers may have gone through a red light, said Sgt. Tom Taylor of the Ventura Police Department, but police are still sorting out conflicting witness statements, he said.

The accident, Taylor said, happened just as school buses had dropped off about 100 children nearby.

Righder’s blue Oldsmobile crashed through a 4-foot-high cinder-block wall and landed in the front rose garden of Thomas and Joyce Haviland at the southeast corner of Telephone Road and Clinton Avenue.

Rettburg’s car stopped in the intersection, police said, and several fire trucks and two ambulances responded to the scene.

Joyce Haviland, 66, said she and her husband were sitting on their back porch when they heard “three big bangs” and raced to the frontyard.

Righder’s car was in the frontyard, its horn blaring and glass everywhere, Joyce Haviland said.

Passersby pulled chunks of the block wall off the car to get to Righder, Haviland said, but they couldn’t reach her as the wall blocked the doors. Rescue workers later used special tools to extricate her. Righder, who was wearing a seat belt, suffered a broken leg and was taken to Community Memorial Hospital, where she was treated and released, police said.

Rettburg, a female adult who was in the front passenger seat of his car and three children in the back seat suffered minor injuries and were treated at Ventura County Medical Center, police said. Head-shaped indentations in the windshield of Rettburg’s black Nissan indicated he and the adult female passenger were not wearing seat belts, Taylor said.