Published: July 17, 2008 01:30 am            

‘This gosh-awful noise’

Man escapes injury when vehicle crashes into his home

FAIRMONT — James Meluzio, 69, said he was in his TV room Wednesday morning when he heard “this gosh-awful noise” at the front door of his home on Old Monongah Road.

He went to investigate and saw “the back end of this big vehicle sticking through the wall,” Meluzio said.

“If I’d been sitting on my living room sofa I probably would have been hurt very badly,” he said.

A late-model sport utility vehicle slid off Old Monongah Road and crashed into Meluzio’s house shortly after 9 a.m., authorities said.

No one was injured, but Meluzio said he estimates repairs to his house will likely cost more than $10,000. The Marion Sheriff’s department is investigating the accident. Details of the accident weren’t available from police Wednesday.

Meluzio and firefighters from the Monongah Volunteer Fire Department said the young man driving the vehicle was shaken up by the accident but otherwise was unharmed.

Monongah Fire Capt. Josh Slagle said firefighters helped Meluzio. They checked the house’s foundation and also helped to shore up the small roof over the porch.

Meluzio said the vehicle spun around as it crossed the yard and then struck a small front porch and the house itself.

“The neighbors couldn’t get over it,” Meluzio said late Wednesday afternoon in a telephone interview.

“They told me that the people who lived here before me had a car come into the yard but it came to a stop” before hitting the house.

His insurance adjuster has already visited to inspect the damage and his grown children — Joseph Meluzio and Christina Wilson, both of

whom live in Marion County — also came over to help him.

Meluzio is retired — “the best job I ever had” — from Allegheny Power. He was a control room foreman at the utility company’s Rivesville power plant.

He bought the house about five years ago, he said.

“I have air conditioning, a brand new unit, but I can’t turn it on now because I’d be cooling the whole outdoors.”

E-mail Bill Byrd at bbyrd@timeswv.com.

        

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