Most people wrapping up a Saturday night are thinking about what’s on TV or whether they remembered to set the coffee maker. Residents of a Woodbury, Minnesota townhome complex had a very different experience just before 11 p.m. on June 21, when a loud boom jolted the neighborhood awake.
The source of that boom was an SUV that had somehow left the road and driven straight into one of the townhomes near Tamarack Road and Interstate 94. One resident, Christine Earls, said her first instinct was that lightning had struck her house. When she went downstairs, she found her wall had been split in two.
Things got considerably worse from there. The impact had shattered a gas meter, setting off a significant natural gas leak. Earls quickly smelled gas pouring from her fireplace, grabbed her son, and got out fast. As a precaution, authorities evacuated 16 townhomes in the area while crews worked to get the situation under control.
What made the whole thing even more remarkable is what happened after the initial crash. The SUV did not come to rest at the first home. It kept moving.
One Vehicle, Three Homes, and a Trail of Damage
According to neighbors who watched or pieced together the aftermath, the SUV hit the first townhome, pulled back out, traveled further down the street, and struck two additional homes. Along the way, it also took out a light pole and at least one utility box.
Neighbor Brenda Kavanagh described the path of destruction the vehicle left behind before it finally came to a stop.
A Neighborhood Left Shaken
Most of the evacuated residents were eventually allowed to return home. The exception, unsurprisingly, were the occupants of the three townhomes that took direct hits. The American Red Cross stepped in to assist those who had nowhere to go that night.
Christine Earls, who has lived in the neighborhood for two years with her father having owned the unit for roughly 15 years before that, said nothing remotely like this had ever happened there before. That tracks. Quiet residential streets near the interstate generally do not feature SUVs caroming from building to building at midnight.
What Investigators Still Don’t Know
The driver of the SUV was transported to a hospital, and fortunately no one else was reported injured.
However, police have not yet released information about what caused the driver to leave the road in the first place, and the timeline for when the three damaged townhomes will be safe to re-enter remains unclear.