After Richard Dill finished his dentist appointment, he called his wife and her news had him rushing to her side. A vehicle had crashed into their Plymouth home for a second time in a three-year span.
"When I saw how close it came, I just hugged her. I just teared up," said Dill. "She was on the piano, in the far end of the living room and had her back to it all and heard this bang and turned around and saw this hole in our wall."
When Dill arrived, a corner of his home was gone after a vehicle careening off Route 6 struck it.
"[The driver] came up through the porch here. You can see the first column. He missed that. He took out the rest of the porch, took out the corner of the house right there, took out this side of the porch, and then ended up on that stump there. That's what stopped him," said Dill.
Had Dill been home, he could have been injured.
"There's a beam that came across the room into the chair I always sit in. If I'd been there it would have hit me in the chest. It just flew across the room. Our television set was there. It flew into the dining room, so he was moving pretty quick," said Dill.
Dill said he saw the driver walking around after the crash and the driver told him someone had cut him off.
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Dill, a pastor at Bible Church in Waterbury, and his wife recently celebrated their 49th anniversary and have spent 41 of those years in their current home.
He said cars smash into a nearby telephone poll about once a year, with the most recent taking place a few weeks ago, but they never had any problems with cars hitting their home until recently.
This is now the second time in three years. The first one took out the porch and his wife was home then too.
"She was right inside the second window, ironing, and all of a sudden heard a thud," said Dill.
Even though the curve by their home has a speed limit of 25, Dill said drivers go a lot faster than that.
"People just speed up this hill like crazy. You'll see it while you're standing here. They just think it's a raceway," said Dill.
Dill said his wife was shaken by what happened on Thursday but she is OK. He said insurance will pay to repair the damage but something needs to change.
"Somebody could have been killed. And it's going to happen sooner or later. It's going to happen," said Dill.
Dill said he plans to place boulders along the lawn to hopefully stop it from happening again.
