Car Flips Onto 3 Vehicles Parked In Minneapolis Driveway; Police Searching For Driver
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- It's not something you see every day: A car laying upside down on top of three other vehicles in south Minneapolis. Yet that's the scene that Tom Taggatz came home to Monday morning.
Overnight, a red, two-door Nissan lost control and crashed into three of his vehicles on the 4200 block of Oakland Avenue South. The driver fled on foot and has not been found.
"You never expected living in the middle of the block for something like this to happen," Taggatz said.
While enjoying a quiet weekend ice fishing up north, Taggatz was unaware of the commotion back home.
"It wasn't a good feeling knowing that the pictures that were sent to me from my neighbor in that house telling me, 'This is your house,'" Taggatz said.
His house is fine, but three of his vehicles are not. They're totaled, along with the red Nissan that hit them. Parts of that car are still scattered across his lawn, and even atop his garage.
It's believed the car was going so fast it hit a hill and got airborne before crashing into the vehicles in Taggatz's driveway.
"If the vehicles wouldn't have been there, my house is right here, the front living room's right there, I could've easily been, you know, hurt there," he said.
The crash happened at about 2:30 a.m. The driver fled the scene, but neighbors didn't called 911 because they didn't see the crash. Eydie Campbell, who lives two doors away, said she heard an explosion and thought it was construction work blocks away.
"The house rattled. It shook the entire house," Campbell said. "Wow. I mean, if somebody walked away from that they were lucky."
Taggatz feels like the victim in this. He was getting ready to sell one of the cars after spending time and money fixing it up. The other one belonged to his late aunt.
"To have something like this happen now is just devastating because I just don't understand," Taggatz said. "I did nothing wrong. It's just too bad that things happen around here and there is no accountability. It's like it's OK and it's not OK."
Minneapolis police say the vehicle was not reported stolen, and it's registered to a man and his son in Blaine. Taggatz isn't sure quite yet if insurance will help him with his losses.
