Driver crashes car into Townsend house, then drives away

Terri Biggs and her family were woken around 4:40 a.m. Aug. 12 to their house shaking and the sound of windows breaking. What they saw next left them in shock.

A car, described by Delaware State Police as a dark-colored 2007 Dodge Caliber, was protruding from the front of their home on Summit Bridge Road in Townsend.

“We saw headlights out the window next to where the [car hit],” Biggs said. “We went outside and as we got around to the front of the house, the car was sitting there revving its motor.”

She watched as the driver of the car got the vehicle unstuck from the home’s foundation, turned off its lights and fled into the darkness, leaving $20,000 to $30,000 in damage to the front room of the home, and possibly more to the rest of the house. They were not able to get the car’s license plate number, but several of the vehicles’ pieces, including the front bumper and part of the transmission, were recovered from the scene.

“It has to be a local car,” said Candice Biggs, Terri’s daughter. “It couldn’t have gone far because [the] transmission is busted.”

Now, the Biggs want the public’s helping in catching the driver.

“This person didn’t know if they killed somebody and they just drove off,” Terri said. “How can you do that?”

Terri said a woman driver pulled over on the opposite side of the road because the car swerved into her lane just before hitting the house.

When the car crashed into the home, it pushed the structure several inches off its foundation, leaving all the windows, a crib and changing table in the front room smashed, and glass over all the contents in the room.

Terri said the room belonged to her 1- and 2-year-old granddaughters, who luckily were not asleep there at the time, and was in transition into a boy’s room, as a grandson is due in September. It housed all the toys and clothes for the granddaughters, plus everything they’d purchased for the new baby. The items were covered in broken glass and removed from the home for damage assessment.

“My granddaughters were upset over that,” Terri said. “They don’t understand where all their stuff is.”

She said Nationwide Insurance will send engineers to check for structural damage to the rest of the house, as the door frame to the front room was also impacted.

Terri said her whole family has been left shaken from the incident and is now wary of traffic in front of their home.

The Biggs house is located right after the speed limit changes on Summit Bridge Road from 50 to 40 miles per hour, but Terri said many people don’t obey the slower speed. The family dog was run over and killed just two days prior to the crash. That vehicle honked and drove away.

“I want to really emphasize the speed on this road. That’s a big issue,” Terri said. “It killed my dog, ruined my house. If it had been another month, that baby would have been in that crib. I know we’re not going to put the baby’s room back up front. We’ll probably get a mortgage and rebuild another room in the back.”

She said she is thankful to the woman who stopped that night, but she didn’t get her name.

Terri also has a message for the driver of the Dodge Caliber: “Enough’s enough,” she said. “You ran through somebody’s house. Turn yourself in.”