Police suspect a medical emergency may have caused an elderly driver to crash through the side of an occupied house in Park Ridge on Friday morning.
The crash occurred shortly before 11 a.m. at the northwest corner of Greenwood Avenue and Castle Drive on the city’s south side, police said.
Ron Davis, administrative services supervisor for the Park Ridge Police Department, said a preliminary investigation determined that an 84-year-old Park Ridge man was driving north on Greenwood Avenue approaching Granville when his black Cadillac drove through a stop sign and then sideswiped two trees and a lamp post before plowing into the side of a brick, split-level home at 1330 S. Greenwood.
Video taken by the homeowners’ daughter Cindy Cronin shows the entire hood of the Cadillac inside her parents’ family room, a gaping hole in the wall.
Donna Larson, who has lived in the house with her husband, Ed, for the last 34 years, said she was sitting at her kitchen table when the Cadillac crashed through her wall, coming to rest just a few feet in front of her.
“We had just finished breakfast,” she said. “I was sitting there, and my husband had just gotten up. All of a sudden, it was like a bomb [had gone off].”
Larson, who was facing the family room into which the car crashed, remembered seeing a large stuffed chair flying toward her. Two hours after the crash, the chair remained overturned on the ground, surrounded by bricks and dust.
“I couldn’t get off the seat. I was just petrified,” Larson recalled.
Pieces of brick and other small debris flew and landed under and around the Larsons’ kitchen table, but neither Donna nor her husband, Ed, were injured.
“It frightened me to death because I thought that was it,” Donna Larson admitted.
Ed Larson said he was standing just around the corner, washing dishes, when the crash happened.
“When I looked up, there was dust everywhere,” he said, his first thoughts turning to the safety of his wife.
Emergency crews were able to remove the driver from the car and take him to the hospital, said the Larsons, who live just blocks from the Park Ridge fire station at Cumberland and Devon avenues.
The driver remained at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge on Friday afternoon with injuries described as “non-life-threatening,” Davis said.
“Right now it’s suspected he suffered a minor medical event that led to the accident occurring,” Davis said.
City building crews have determined that the Larsons can remain in their home, he added.
Despite the damage to her house and furnishings, Donna Larson said she is thankful the car did not hit the house of her neighbor next door.
Young children live there, she said.
Twitter: @Jen_Tribune
