AUBURN – A New Gloucester woman escaped serious injury Thursday when her car slid through a snowbank and sailed through the air, bouncing into two buildings before coming to rest.
Police said 45-year-old Donna L. Dufault was driving down a hill toward Broad Street at about 3 p.m. when the tires of her vehicle skidded on ice at the edge of a snowbank.
Her Nissan Pathfinder was then pulled into the snowbank before it smashed through the other side and the damage began, police said.
The sport utility vehicle first struck a set of stairs and a satellite dish at 50 South Main St. The impact caused the Pathfinder to sail through the air for a distance, according to a police report.
While airborne, the roof of the vehicle struck a second-floor porch at 44 South Main St. and then the Nissan slammed nose first into the house below.
Dufault sat stunned in her Pathfinder when the first witnesses began to arrive at the scene.
Paula Wells, who lives at 50 South Main St., had stepped onto her front stairs just moments before the accident. She had been waiting for the mailman to arrive. What she found instead was an SUV skidding in her direction.
“I had to jump out of the way,” Wells said. “I ran up the stairs.”
Wells said she dashed into her apartment to call for an ambulance, then returned to the crash scene. There, she and another man tried to comfort Dufault, who was alone in the SUV.
Firefighters got Dufault out, and she was examined for complaints of pain. Meanwhile, police stayed behind to begin a crash report detailing the damage.
Damage to the stairs and railing at 50 South Main St. was estimated at $250. The building is owned by Donald Poisson. Damage to Wells’ DirecTV dish was estimated at $100. Damage to the second-floor porch and the lower part of the house at 44 South Main St., a building owned by Jennifer Billings, was estimated at $7,000.
After fire crews had left and Wells had a chance to catch her breath, she said she was still shaken from the experience.
“I was pretty lucky,” she said.
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