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OREM — Neighbors say homeowners avoided injuries Wednesday in a car-versus-house ordeal that surveillance video shows happened when an SUV pulled up behind a parked car and then pushed it across the street.
The chain of events unfolded sometime after 11:30 a.m., according to neighbor Marcus Hight.
He said he arrived home and was immediately stunned to see that his son's car, which had been parked on the north side of 1600 North, had somehow crashed into the house across 800 West.
"Yeah, shock was pretty much the way I felt," Hight said. "My first thought, 'Was anybody home?'"
Surveillance video from another neighbor's house that was shared with KSL shows a silver SUV pull up behind the car parked on the road outside the Hight residence and sit there for multiple minutes before tires could be heard squealing as the SUV pushed the parked car forward.
"It almost looked like he deliberately lined up behind our car and just slowly pushed it all the way into their house," Hight said. "The people that heard it — it was just a very slow, screeching sound."
Photos shared by a family member who lives in the house that was impacted showed the sedan three-quarters of the way inside after having plowed through the wall at roughly couch level.
"When we heard that the one son was there and literally 10 feet away, came almost right into his lap — we were so glad no one was hurt," Hight said.
The home sustained substantial damage, and a notice on the door Wednesday evening cautioned that the house was unsafe to enter or occupy.
Orem police on Thursday said the driver of the SUV, a 69-year-old man, was treated at a local hospital mostly as a precaution. The man was then issued a citation. Police say impairment is believed to be a factor in the crash. The man's name was not released Thursday.
Hight said an investigator asked him if he knew the SUV driver, but Hight said he did not.
"One of the police officers said he'd been on the force for 16 years and never seen anything like that," Hight said.
Hight continued to be in disbelief hours after the ordeal Wednesday evening.
"You'll have cars driven into homes sometimes, but never pushed like this," he said. "It was, yeah, quite puzzling."
Contributing: Pat Reavy
