A car parked in the driveway was all that saved Sylvia Lawrence when a car smashed through a fence and into the bedroom wall, her daughter says.
Sylvia and David Lawrence were woken early yesterday morning when a ute crashed through a brick wall, into a car parked outside their Otumoetai Rd house and then into the wall, killing the driver.
"I think mum is lucky to be alive. If that [car] had not have been parked where it was, she'd be dead," said daughter Susan Hoonhout, who lives with her husband Victor next door to her parents.
Hoonhout had loaned her mother the Mazda 101, which was parked near the front door of their house, and said she had no doubt that the car saved her mother's life. The crumpled wreck absorbed most of the impact.
The wheels of the car went through the bedroom wall and tyre marks from the upturned ute were left on the home's front guttering.