A car crashed into the side of a southeast Atlanta home Tuesday night, wiping out the very spot where a woman was sitting moments earlier.
“I had just got up out of the chair in the corner where the worst damage is at,” Roxanne Cade told AJC.com on Wednesday.
She said she went to put up the dog and planned to return to the patio to enjoy the rest of her evening. But then Cade heard a loud boom just before 11 p.m., and her porch was gone.
“A little more,” she said, “and it would have been me.”
Cade shares her home in the 2200 block of Burroughs Avenue with her 86-year-old roommate, Mary Bledsoe. Most nights, both women sit out on the patio to watch the cars and people pass. Bledsoe also has her puzzle book, she said.
They recognized the 2018 Dodge Challenger that crashed into their home as a neighbor’s car. A couple and a toddler also escaped unharmed, according to Atlanta police.
The driver told officers he had to “swerve out of the way of two vehicles that appeared to have been racing,” police spokesman Officer Jarius Daugherty said.
He was cited for failure to maintain lane.
Bledsoe said she, too, would have been sitting in the careening car’s path, but she wanted to see a program on TV and left her chair five minutes before Cade.
“When I hopped up and saw what it was, I got nervous, when I saw all the glass on the floor,” she said.
Cade is thanking God for her life, but “things happen,” she said.
They are hoping to rebuild the room to resume their nighttime routine.
“If they fix it,” Bledsoe said, “I’m going to still sit on the porch with my puzzle book.”
