LAWTON, Okla_An accident on Sheridan Road Friday afternoon involving an eighteen wheeler running into a store front shut down one lane of traffic for over an hour. Two crumpled cars, a semi truck sandwiched between them all came to rest on the edge of the Wolverton Furniture store front. Amazingly no one was seriously injured.
Police are still investigating the cause of the accident but so far it looks like the driver of one of these cars tried to change lanes failing to recognize the semi truck. Police say the driver of the semi had no where to go but into the stores shoulder parking lot where he collided into a parked car that crashed through the stores glass wall.
From what 911 callers
told police and from what officers found when they arrived, there was no doubt
this was a bad accident and that someone could be seriously injured. Amazingly
enough, only one person was hospitalized with non life threatening injuries.
As it turned
out, the semi had not gone through the store, but had pushed a parked car into
the edge of the building shattering glass and breaking away part of the
concrete wall.
"A lot of
bustle, a lot of people freaking out, I was looking around to see if anyone was
hurt, laying on the ground, a lot of commotion," Ronn Wolverton said.
But even
scarier were the seconds that unfolded just before impact.
"It was awful
I thought I was dead, I did," Glenda Davis said.
Glenda was the
driver behind the wheel of one of these crumpled cars.
"I saw him
coming I knew I was going to get hit."
Davis along with
witnesses Sabrina Brown and Ronn Wolverton say the impact made a sound they'll
never forget.
"I thought
it was never going to stop, it was so loud, a crunching," Davis said.
"It sounded
like a huge garage door being slammed down for a long time, screeching doesn't
even tough that, it was louder like a lot of aluminum being drug down,"
Brown said.
"I was helping
customers and just heard a huge crash, just felt it, my hair is probably still
standing up, scared me to death, I called 911 right away," Wolverton said.
Davis says once her
car finally came to a stop she says she cried thankful tears to be alive and
that this accident wasn't more serious.
"I just
set there and started crying. I was upset to see my car, but it's just a car
I'll get another one."
As horrifying
as this accident may look eerily for her it's deja vu.
"An 18
wheeler hit me on the highway one time in the rear. I don't know it's kinds
strange."
Davis was taken to
the hospital to be checked out for leg pain, but other than that no one was
seriously hurt.
Meanwhile, just down the street from that accident, and at almost the same time, another one at the intersection of Sheridan and Columbia. This one was a 2 car accident in the northbound lane of Sheridan. It appeared that someone might have been following too closely with lunch-hour traffic and couldn't stop in time. The car in front wasn't badly damaged but the other appeared to have quite a bit. As far as we know, no one was taken to the hospital.
A third accident happened in Lawton around the same time as the first two. In this, two cars were towed away at Parkview and Cache Roads after police say one car forced another into a fire hydrant. Police were called to the intersection after a green car that had been headed south on 14th Street was broad sided by a white car which had been heading east on Cache.
Police say the driver of the green car failed to yield to traffic. After the initial impact, both cars jumped a nearby curb.
One car hit a tree, the other became entangled with a fire hydrant. Even though police say a young child was a passenger in one of the cars, there were no injuries.
