FIFTY FOOT DROP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 February 1939, Page 5

FIFTY FOOT DROP

CAR LEAPS FROM STREET TO STREET. DRIVER LUCKY TO ESCAPE DEATH. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) HASTINGS, February 21. Pl car leaping 50ft down a hillside from one street level to another startled lhe whole neighbourhood in Napier at 6.30 tonight. The car, driven by Mr F. R. Reynolds, failed to take an elbow bend, crashed down into the back garden of a residence on a lower street, and came to rest capsized on a tree stump, which penetrated the hood, missing the back of the driver by inches. Mr Reynolds, who was the only occupant, received injuries to the head and a fractured left leg. He was taken to Napier Hospital and his condition is reported to be satisfactory. Mr Reynolds had a remarkable escape from death, but the occupants of the house were just as lucky, as the tree stump which crashed through the car’s hood stopped it from rolling down the hill and plunging into the rear of the house. The first inkling the occupants had that anything was amiss was when the house received a sudden jolt, as though it was being wrenched apart, caused by the car becoming entangled in the wireless aerial strung between the house and the hiU, during its fall.