Police Chief David Westrick and his family were awakened by the sound of an explosion and shaking early Friday morning at their Hollister home. With his wife and 11-year-old daughter in the Santa Ana Road house, Westrick ran toward the noise.
“I saw a vehicle in my living room,” he said.
That was because a suspected drunk driver crashed a Jeep Laredo into Westrick’s house around 1 a.m. Friday. The women driving the Jeep veered off the road and struck the kitchen before the vehicle rested in the living room.
The suspect was injured and treated at the scene by responders, Westrick said. A California Highway Patrol spokesman could not be reached immediately to confirm details on the driver or investigation.
The crash may end up leading to the home being condemned, Westrick said, while the recently renovated kitchen was completely destroyed. As examples of the violent collision, a relatively new chef’s oven bounced around the home “like a ping pong ball,” and the suspect vehicle’s floor mats ended up in a field behind the house, Westrick said.
“It was pretty scary stuff,” he said.
In the wreck’s immediate aftermath, Westrick smelled gas from a ruptured line and reacted by evacuating his wife and daughter from a bedroom window before getting his two dogs out as well.
In the meantime, he noticed the suspect “wiggle” out of the vehicle and try to get out of a window from inside of the home, he said. The suspect ran around in the yard area, but a witness on scene grabbed her, the chief said.
Westrick also had been concerned about power lines. The driver struck two power poles, with one of them about two-thirds of the way down toward the ground, he said.
