Susan Stanton and her longtime partner Stephen Willard were still sleeping in the early morning darkness Friday when they heard a crash.
The couple emerged from the front door of the oceanfront South Ponte Vedra Boulevard home they’ve lived in for 40 years and stood there in shock.
A truck had rammed through an exterior staircase, taking out a porch before settling inside their garage.
“The stairs were gone,” she told The Citizen. “The only thing holding us up is his truck right now. I don’t know what’s going to happen when they pull it out.”
The driver of the Chevrolet Silverado, she said, remained at the scene after the wild crash. “He said he wasn’t drinking,” Stanton said. “But he was acting weird.”
Arriving rescue crews had to extend a ladder up to their elevated front door so they could clamber down to safety. The pulverized staircase was their only means of exit.
Willard — a Flagler College teacher — and Stanton are now staying at a local hotel until the fate of their home becomes clear.
“When they pull his truck out, the deck is just going to collapse,” Stanton said. “The question is when we do it and how we do it.”
Stanton said she has since been in contact with another driver who said the truck owner smashed into her car first before careening off the road and into the staircase.
The woman, she said, had finished a double shift at a St. Augustine restaurant and was heading home to Neptune Beach along South Ponte Vedra Boulevard.
The waitress said the truck driver was speeding with his high beams on and smacked into her vehicle, sending it 20 feet into a nearby wooded area.
She became stuck in her vehicle and had to tear her dress off in order to exit from the passenger side.
Stanton said Willard — who had to cancel his Flagler classes on Friday — had been involved in a serious car wreck just this past summer in Vilano Beach that landed him in an ICU unit before he recovered.
AIA, she said, is becoming increasingly busy and is poorly lit at night.
“It’s just a two-lane road,” she added. “It can get dark, and you have a speed limit of 55. It’s really becoming a problem with so much commuting now.”
Stanton said it’s not the first time someone careened onto her property. A group of teens, she said, ran off the road several years ago, plowed over her palm tree, and ended up in a neighbor’s yard.
While still in shock over Friday’s crash, Stanton said she is hopeful that she and Willard can move back in.
“We just have to figure out how to get the truck out,” she said.
The incident is being investigated.
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