Last night I was minding my own business reading a book while listening to the radio at 12:15am when I heard a screeching noise from the wet street outside. That was immediately followed by a huge bang.
If you look at this picture, just out of the frame to the right is a concrete post with a mailbox on it, just like the one that is in the picture. Somebody in a Nissan Sentra came down the hill, lost control, and completely wiped out that post, and I mean sheared it off at the base. It wound up on the left side of the driveway seen in the photo.
I looked out the window and saw the driver open the door and back out of the car. I headed out to see if I could help, and by the time I got there the driver was nowhere in sight. Comparing notes a little later my neighbor, whose mailbox it was, said he saw the driver take off running down the hill.
The hood of the Nissan was crushed, the bumper was torn off, and the airbag had deployed. It occurred to me that the keys might still be in the car, so I reached in, turned it off and pulled them out of the ignition. I don't think the engine was still running, but why risk a fire, I thought.
The cops showed up in a hurry, and as it turned out, the driver lived right down the street at his aunt's townhouse; it was her car. I guess the cops ran the registration through the DMV database and found the owner's address, because they chased him down where he lived. He admitted he'd been drinking; I don't know how he thought running away was going to solve anything.
Fortunately, he apparently wasn't injured (I didn't see him), but we had a lot of overnight excitement.
Posted by Linkmeister at October 4, 2009 10:37 AM | TrackBackAnother version of "the great mailbox caper".
Posted by: cassie-b at October 5, 2009 05:30 AMDoesn't anyone watch "Cops" anymore? They should know by now that even HPD can figure out whose car it belongs to and who was driving. But that's the trouble when one drinks and drives, one's brain turns off for the night. We should just be glad that the mailbox was the only victim. He could have smashed into someone on the freeway. That would have been a real disaster.
Posted by: Illanoy Gal at October 5, 2009 02:00 PM