Car crash leaves three injured in Kannapolis

BY JENNIFER MOXLEY & JILL McCARTNEY
SALISBURY POST

KANNAPOLIS — Three people were taken to NorthEast Medical Center in Concord Friday night after a white Ford Probe plowed into a mobile home on Village Park Road.

At press time the driver, a woman, was in the intensive care unit, and the front-seat passenger was undergoing surgery after being pinned in the car. The back-seat passenger, a male adolescent, was treated and released Friday.

The names of those injured have not been released.

According to Officer T.L. Spry, who responded to the scene, the vehicle lost control as it traveled west on Cottage Road. It ran off the left side of the road as it reached the intersection of Cottage and Village Park, where it ran into a parked vehicle and the mobile home, which was knocked off its foundation. 

"The wall jumped at me," said Cynthia Rowell, who lives at 1427 Village Park Road, where the vehicle hit. Rowell was making her children's beds when "the wall caved in both sides of the house at me," she said.

"I have been sick all week and had to go to hospital Wednesday, so my kids were with the grandparents," Rowell said. "Everything on the walls fell." There is a 10 mph speed limit posted, but according to Spry, the vehicle was traveling between 35 and 40 mph when it started to skid. He added that alcohol was not a factor.

"They have put in speed bumps to try and slow people down, but it hasn't helped," he said.

"The front steps were jolted 3 or 4 inches from where they should have been," Rowell said.

According to Spry, the vehicle came to rest under Rowell's home, literally lifting it off the ground.

"It shook the entire house; things in the kitchen and in the hallway are on the floor, and that is halfway through the house," Rowell said.

Rowell's house is about 15 or 20 feet from the road, but she said the accident "jolted the house off its foundation." 

"It's not going to be something that masking tape and plaster of Paris will fix," she said.

"That was a pretty hard hit," Spry agreed.

Rowell said a boy was running behind the car and must have jumped out of the car before it crashed. 

"He was scraped up," she said.

According to Spry, the boy lives in the mobile home community. He was not sure whether the driver, identified as the boy's sister, lived there also.

Rowell thought about what could have happened had her children been home. 

"My kids would have been sleeping right there if this had been a later hour," she said.