A Wodonga couple have described the terrifying moment a car ploughed into their front fence early yesterday.
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Neil Rousu and Natalie Ricci heard screeching sounds before a loud crash about 12.30am as the car smashed the brick and corrugated iron fence of their Lawrence Street home.
The impact caused more than 300 bricks from the fence and a garden bed to spear into the yard, some reaching as far as their front steps.
One brick lodged in the glass window of their lounge-room — about seven metres away.
The couple were in their bedroom at the back of the house.
“I heard screeching, a crash and bounced out of bed,” said Mr Rousu, who was watching television.
“It was pretty horrible, pretty scary.
“I was expecting to see the car in the house.”
Ms Ricci was fast asleep and didn’t wake to the noise.
“She thought I was joking when I told her,” Mr Rousu said.
Ms Ricci said they often sat on the front porch in the evening.
“I could have been walking in the garden and been paralysed.”
Wodonga’s Sgt Larry Goldsworthy said a Wodonga man, 19, had lost control of his XR6 Ford sedan in Lawrence Street, between Watson and Railway streets.
“He hit a power pole, slid sideways into the fence, bounced around and took out a small tree,” he said.
The car’s P-plate driver escaped uninjured.
His female passenger, 16, was taken to hospital with minor injuries.
Police spoke to the driver at the scene.
Mr Rousu and Ms Ricci said the driver’s behaviour was stupid.
“It’s lucky he didn’t kill the girl with him,” Mr Rousu said.
While the couple were too angry to speak to the driver, a neighbour voiced her disgust.
She told him had he crashed further on, he may have slammed through her fenceless yard into the her sleeping son’s bedroom.
Ms Ricci said she was upset the flower bed she’d worked on since moving to the house four months ago was wrecked with “my pretty flowers and pretty lights all smashed”.
“I should be reimbursed ’cause it costs a lot of money,” she said.