SUV Rams Home; Residents Are OK
Sallie and Ben Hartjoy had just sat down at 7 p.m. Sunday to watch TV’s “Candid Camera,” one of their favorite shows.
“When we heard the noise, I thought two vehicles must have been in a collision in front of the house,” said Ben Hartjoy.
In fact, a young neighbor had just crashed his sport utility vehicle into a bedroom wall of their house.
In the 44 years the Hartjoys have lived at Blanchard and New avenues in Anaheim, it had crossed Sallie Hartjoy’s mind that their house could be hit if a vehicle went out of control.
But when it happened Sunday night, with a loud boom that shook the house, it didn’t register what was going on.
“It was such a huge crash, my first thought was ‘earthquake,’ ” said Sallie Hartjoy, 86. “But yet it didn’t feel like an earthquake.”
The driver lost control as he headed south on New and tried to turn west onto Blanchard. The vehicle jumped the curb, tore down the chicken wire surrounding the Hartjoys’ large vegetable garden, plowed through the garden and crashed into a bedroom on the northeast corner of the house.
The driver, whose name was not released, told the Hartjoys his steering wheel locked.
The Hartjoys, who were in the living room, were uninjured. The driver complained of a head injury but was not hospitalized.
Although the vehicle did not go into the bedroom itself, it did cause considerable wall damage and knocked over a picture, an end table and a lamp.
“We were lucky it wasn’t worse that it was,” said Ben Hartjoy, 83. His wife said the moments after the crash were frantic:
“I went running one way, Ben another. I’d never really dwelled on our house getting hit by a car, because it had never happened. But the way folks come so fast around that corner, I always knew it could happen. What a shocker to see it really did.”
The Hartjoys are well known in the neighborhood for their beautiful garden. Neighbors who flocked to the scene afterward were dismayed at the damage to the garden, which Ben Hartjoy spent so much time tending. He said he was growing tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, onions, eggplants, carrots, beats, cauliflower and squash. The Hartjoys give the produce to friends and neighbors.
“But I can grow more vegetables and we can repair the house; we’re just glad the young fellow was OK,” he said of the neighbor behind the wheel. “He’s a nice young man; we know his family.”
Though the Hartjoys admitted they were still shaking from the ordeal hours after it happened, Sallie Hartjoy said there was something positive that came from it.
“To have all these neighbors show up and be concerned about us, it’s just a good feeling to know we live in such a neighborhood,” she said.
