Five minutes later and the situation could have been much worse.
This was the acknowledgement of South District, St George homeowner Ingrid Knight-Lewis, who is grateful today after she escaped serious injury two days ago.
It was last Saturday, around 8:15 a.m., when 34-year-old Nicholas White, of Inchcape, St Philip, lost control of the hired vehicle he was driving and ran off the road into Knight-Lewis’ house.
It had struck a utility pole, crashed through the fence around Knight-Lewis’ garden, damaged the Barbados Water Authority main, her house and her car which was parked at the side.
When the DAILY NATION visited the scene, a BWA crew was busily working to restore service. The hired vehicle had been removed, but the garden showed the devastation of the accident and Knight-Lewis’ car windshield had been shattered.
“I was in the kitchen and I heard the car coming up and then I heard ‘bam’, and it went straight through the fencing. You could see all the things there,” she said, pointing to what was left of her plants and fence.
“You could hear him coming . . . . I had just come inside,” she recalled, adding she was unhurt but “just a bit shaken up”.
“I thank God for that. If I was out here it would have been worse.”
Knight-Lewis, who has lived in the area for at least 25 years, said she heard the car coming but when the impact occurred, she actually thought “it was above”.
“When I came out I saw him in my garden, right down under the window. He knocked out the pipe from there and everything. That is why Water Authority just left here.
“He damaged my car. The car was here,” she added, pointing to the spot under her bay window. “I don’t know how he hit here and then come here.”
She is convinced it was her fence that saved her vehicle by slowing the speed of the oncoming car.
“If I didn’t have any fencing, he would have gone straight in my car,” she said, as she acknowledged the South District stretch was a “busy road”.
Driver White and front seat passenger Rico Greaves, 25, of River Land, St Philip, were both hurt.
White suffered injuries to the left hand and cuts to the face, while Greaves complained of injuries to the chest.
They were taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital by ambulance and their injuries were later listed as non-life threatening.
Police are investigating. (HLE)