A local family narrowly escaped harm on Thursday night when a stolen Jeep crashed through the front of their Fernwood home, killing the driver of the vehicle and wounding two other teens that were in the SUV at the time of the crash.
“Once it hit, it shifted under my feet,” August Hill said of the incident. “It was like I was standing on top of the car.”
Just after 7 p.m. Thursday, Chicago police spotted a vehicle driving erratically in the Fernwood neighborhood on the South Side. When they attempted to pull the vehicle over, the Jeep took off from the scene, and just a few blocks later crashed into a home in the 10200 block of South Wentworth Avenue.
Hill said that her mother and her daughter were with her inside the home when the crash took place, and if they had been sitting just a few feet closer to the front window, they could have been seriously injured.
“If you’ve felt an earthquake, you could feel the ripples of the floor just coming through,” Hill said. “I turned around, and there’s no front of the house.”
On Friday, the family was briefly allowed back into the home to retrieve their grandmother’s wheelchair, clothing, medicine and food.
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“They were so miserable yesterday,” relative Tameka Royston said. “Everything is in their home, so for us to go get some things was amazing.”
The damage to the building is so extensive that the home will have to be demolished. Hill is 4 months pregnant, but says that the family is focusing on the positives, as they could have been badly hurt in the crash.
“I’m just blessed that we are all here,” Hill said. “We are breathing. It’s just fine.”
