EVANDER – Ms Ronell Earle (58) has no idea how she will ever be able to replace her car that was wrecked when a man sped his car through her concrete garden wall and into her Toyota Corolla on Sunday morning, 29 July.
“If my car was not in the way, that Mercedes Benz would have smashed right through my bedroom wall!”
Ms Earle’s house is on the corner of Leeds and Munchen Street opposite Evander High School. Stellenbosch Street running next to the school ends in a T-junction with Munchen Street and Ms Earle’s house.
A man was speeding down Stellenbosch Street, over speed bumps at the school, straight through the T-junction barrier and the concrete wall and landed the silver C 200 Mercedes Benz (2006) half way on top of Ms Earle’s car at about 4.40am on Sunday.
“I woke up just before that and went to make coffee. Then I heard the commotion.”
Ms Christine Hagemann, who was staying over at Ms Earle’s house on Saturday night, woke up from the noise. “I had such a huge fright. I thought it was doomsday.”
Ms Earle made her way to where the mangled wrecks were – scarcely a metre away from her bedroom window. “I saw how the person inside threw an open bottle of whiskey under the car. By then there were more people on the scene. The minute the man could get out, he belted out of there, scaling fences as he ran off.”
Police confirmed that the driver was still missing on Monday, but that they knew who he is. He allegedly took his father’s vehicle without permission and after the accident packed his bags and disappeared.
“I usually never park my car under the carport, because that used to be my mother’s spot. A similar incident happened to her vehicle years ago and after she died, I did not use the carport.
“I usually drive the car to the front of the house, but after I had it thoroughly cleaned and washed on Saturday, I thought the car would keep clean longer if I parked it there,” a devastated Ms Earle said.
“My cousin helped so we could at least barricade the hole in the fence with the broken carport. I do not want to be the victim of crime too,” said Ms Earle.
She is a tiny woman who was born with a hunch back and is disabled. Ms Earle was retrenched from her work in 2010 and used her pension money to pay off her mother’s house. She now lives off her disability pension and does not have insurance on her car.
“There is no way that I will ever be able to afford another car. I am still reeling with shock,” she told the newspaper.
