- December 16, 2025
An elderly woman drove over a median, hopped a curb, plowed through a fence, sustained a three-foot drop and bonked into a house in the B-section at 12:40 p.m. Friday. She was taken to the hospital, but was feeling no pain and only had a small cut, according to the officers on the scene.
Duane Barksdale, of Baltimore, is in Palm Coast visiting family, and he saw the crash.
“I was getting ready to bring (the dog for a walk) when I heard the tires squealing,” he said. “It looked like she was trying to make a U-turn.”
He said the woman, whom he estimated to be 80 years old, was driving north on Belle Terre Parkway, when she attempted to make a U-turn at Braddock. But she scraped along the southbound curb and came to a dead stop.
“Then the car took off,” Barksdale said. “It was like she was on the brake and gas at time same.”
When the woman hit the house, “It sounded like someone let off a bazooka out here,” he said.
He said she coherent and was more worried about the house than about herself or her car. Within five minutes, he added, she was being transported to the hospital.
The impact of the car left a hole about the size of a dinner plate in the concrete, about two feet up on the back of the house.
When homeowner Gia Kekelia arrived, his first question was whether the driver was OK. Then he said he was also hit in a car by an elderly driver about a year ago.
Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Leonard Yuknavage said he has been working in the area for about a year, and this is the first time he has been called to a car-vs.-house incident. In his previous area, Orlando, people usually crash into houses because they’re being chased, he said.
Click here for photos from the scene of the accident.
