Decatur,AL : Car crashes into Decatur home, jolts sleeping couple awake on January, Saturday 27th 2018

Bruce and Nell Wheeler were sleeping soundly in their Southwest Decatur home early Saturday morning when a car crashed into the master bathroom, stopping about six feet from their bed.

“It was kaboom,” Nell Wheeler recalled Monday morning. “I jumped straight up in bed. My feet hit the floor. I heard water spraying.

“I slipped on my blue jeans real quick, come to the front door, which I couldn’t get open … and there sits the car in the middle of our master bathroom.”

Police said a 2005 Chrysler 300 driven by Alejandro Tomas, 19, of Decatur, crashed into the residence at 1907 Patterson St. S.W. The accident was reported at 1:54 a.m.

Tomas was taken by ambulance to Huntsville Hospital, police said. Wheeler said he was believed to have a leg injury that wasn’t life-threatening. Tomas wasn’t in the hospital’s system Monday, according to hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Malone.

The investigation into the accident is continuing, and no charges had been filed as of Monday morning, police spokeswoman Emily Long said.

Neither Nell Wheeler, 66, nor Bruce Wheeler, 70, was injured, and there were no other residents at the home. Bricks from the wall around the bathroom remained scattered in the home’s front yard Monday as the Wheelers waited for an insurance adjuster before starting cleanup. A 4-by-4-inch wooden post braced the roof after being placed by Decatur firefighters.

Fixtures in the bathroom were torn loose by the car’s impact, with a granite countertop knocked from the sink into a tub.

“If we had been in the bathroom for any reason whatsoever, we wouldn’t be here this morning,” Nell Wheeler said. “It took me an hour to be able to breathe normal again. It was just total shock.”

Nell Wheeler said she was told rebuilding the damaged area could cost $30,000 or more. She said the couple had a frozen pipe repaired earlier this month, so she knew where the key tool was in her garage for turning off water service to the house. She was able to retrieve it quickly Saturday to turn off water at the street, limiting water damage. The couple was waiting until cleanup could begin to seal off pipes in the bathroom and restore water service to the rest of the house.

Surveillance video from a neighboring home shows the vehicle in the crash traveling on Garth Avenue, which doesn’t continue after intersecting Patterson Street. The vehicle crosses Patterson and continues on a straight line into the yard of the home where the Wheelers have lived for the past year of their 47 years in Decatur.

Nell Wheeler mentioned seeing pictures earlier this month from California of the car that hit a center divider, went airborne and became lodged in the second story of a building.

“It’s surreal,” she said. “It’s stuff you see on TV and think it’s never going to happen to you.

“And you get up and here sits a car in your master bathroom.

“It can happen to you.”

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Car crashes into Decatur home, jolts sleeping couple awake