ROY, Utah, July 31 (Gephardt Daily) — Members of a Roy family are happy to have their mother alive after an early morning crash that left a pickup truck protruding into the corner of her bedroom.
The truck stopped just a few feet short of the bed where Elsa Razo, 48, was sleeping. An interior brick wall stopped the red Dodge, which had been westbound on 4800 South.
The truck sheered off a telephone pole, knocking out power to a Roy neighborhood. It crashed through the corner of a garden retaining wall at a first house, skidded across the yard of a second residence, then ran over a small peach tree at 2640 west before ramming into the home a few feet beyond.
“We were all sleeping at like 6:30 and there was a big boom,” said Alondra Contreras, 18. “Then my mom came in and her face was covered with dust.”
Razo had a cut on her head and an injured shoulder. She was taken by ambulance to the emergency room, and was treated and released.
She returned home and to sit outside her house, which had been condemned by a building inspector, in part due to the gas line broken in the crash.
“They’ll have to get an engineer in here to approve it,” said Cpt. Ron Lathem, of Roy City Fire and Rescue, who was at the scene.
Alondra Contreras was standing in her home’s driveway among the tiny peaches that has been strewn the full length of the property. One of the truck’s tires had come loose and rolled into her mother’s bedroom, she said, wiping tears from her eyes at the thought.
Carina Contreras said her mother was still shaken.
“You see a truck in your house and you get a little scared,” she said. “If that brick wall hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t be here. She would have been squished.”
The house’s six residents, including boys ages 3 and 14, were displaced by the accident.
“We have contacted the Red Cross to help them find a place to stay,” Lathem said.
A 17-year-old male was driving the truck when it veered off the road and traveled about 200 feet before crashing through the southeast corner of the split-level residence, Lathem said.
The driver and a male passenger in the truck appeared to be unhurt, Carina Contreras said.
“We came out and they were looking at the truck,” she said. “They said they were sorry.”
The teen later was cited for careless driving.
