Pickup truck slams into home — just feet from teen sleeping inside, Georgia cops say
A Georgia teen was asleep in bed when a pick-up truck left the road and plowed into his family’s Coweta County home.
The crash occurred around midnight Sunday with the truck coming to rest inside the garage, WGCL reported. The driver barely missed the bedroom where 16-year-old Dalton McKinzie was sleeping just a few feet away.
Photos from the scene show damage to the side of the home where the impact left the windows smashed. The aftermath was a gaping hole and a pile of bricks, though the family is glad Dalton got out unscathed.
“I was in shock, it’s crazy that it didn’t even hit me,” Dalton told WGCL. “[I] came and looked and saw, first thing I saw, was just the wall all caved in and then came outside and saw the truck in there. I didn’t know what to think.”
Family members who also live at the home said the teen’s bed is pushed up against the windows near where the truck hit.
“(Dalton’s) just further over,” said Heather Gibson, according to WAGA. “If it was a little off it would have hit him in the back of the head.”
The teen’s sister, Ashley Gibson, recalled being roused out of bed by what sounded like “crazy thunder.”
“We didn’t know at the time what it was, and the house was shaking” Gibson told The Newnan Times-Herald. “We honestly thought it was just thunder at the time. We checked the news, (and) it wasn’t raining so we got out and got really nervous that all of a sudden something blew up under the house, because that’s how bad it was.”
The driver, who wasn’t named, told the family he swerved to avoid hitting a deer at the intersection, according to WAGA. His brakes locked up, he said, and sent the truck barreling toward the home.
McClatchy News reached out to the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday and is awaiting a response.
Police cited the driver for failure to maintain lane, WGCL reported, citing authorities.
Coweta County is about 40 miles southwest of Atlanta.
This story was originally published October 5, 2021 at 9:39 AM with the headline "Pickup truck slams into home — just feet from teen sleeping inside, Georgia cops say."