Woman loses control of car, crashes into Riverbank home

A car driven by an elderly woman crashed into the closed garage of a Riverbank home Wednesday evening, starting a fire and leaving a path of damage in its wake.

The woman appeared to have been turning around in the cul-de-sac of Kenneth Charles Court when she lost control.

Her hatchback hit a Toyota parked on the north end of the street around 6:15 p.m. Skid marks chart the car’s course from there. It hit a sport-utility vehicle parked in a driveway, which was propelled into a truck parked next to it.

The hatchback then drove through the next-door neighbor’s front yard, uprooting several shrubs and small trees, before making a sharp left turn and crashing through the garage door across the street.

Rolando Andrade, whose landscaping was run over, heard the “continuous banging” and ran outside to see the smoking hatchback inside his neighbor’s garage, the metal garage door crumpled in the driveway.

He and several other neighbors ran across the street and were met by one of the residents.

“We told her to turn off the engine and she just looked at us with a blank stare,” Andrade said.

He said the resident used a pair of pliers to break hatchback’s window to turn the engine off and unlock the doors.

They got the driver out safely just before the engine caught fire, Andrade said.

The driver was taken by ambulance to a local hospital with minor injuries, said Stanislaus Consolidated Fire Chief Randall Bradley.

He said the vehicle went through the back of the garage and partially protruded into the home’s kitchen.

In addition to the resident who helped the driver, a woman and several children were inside the hous e when the crash occurred, according to neighbors.

Bradley said the woman was hit by flying debris and suffered minor injuries. She, too, was taken to an area hospital.

Firefighters quickly extinguished the fire in the garage but had to break out skylight windows to ventilate the home.

Riverbank police Sgt. Josh Humble said investigators were called to the scene to determine what caused the accident.

This story was originally published June 17, 2015 at 9:16 PM with the headline "Woman loses control of car, crashes into Riverbank home."