Former mayor's New Year's Eve plans delayed by crashed car in yard

A blue Hyundai Accent slid off of Carmi Avenue New Year's Eve afternoon and fell into former mayor Mike Pearce's backyard on Holden Road. The vehicle was towed out this morning.

Image Credit: Contributed

January 02, 2014 - 3:52 PM

PENTICTON - Former Penticton mayor Mike Pearce and wife Sharon never would have guessed the crashing noise they heard on New Year's Eve was a car falling into their backyard.

The couple live at 1624 Holden Rd. and their backyard is inaccessible to vehicles. When they moved into their new home this fall, they cut away the brush and dug a tiered backyard out of the rock.

At about 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 31 someone found a new way into the backyard. Two young women in their 20s were in a blue Hyundai Accent coming down Carmi Avenue, which runs above Holden Road. Sharon said according to the two girls the car clipped the edge of a concrete rail, left the road, spun and slid backwards all the way down an embankment into the Pearce's rocky backyard.

Sharon and Mike were inside their home waiting to go out for New Year's Eve. They heard a loud tumbling noise but neither thought it was what it turned out to be. They thought it might have been the furnace or another large appliance acting up.

"What was that?" Sharon had asked.

Mike went to check and noticed a blue car filled his backyard. His wife couldn't believe what he told her.

"I thought ho-ho-ho, how can a car be in the backyard?"

When she went to check herself she found the two women and the car. They had stepped out of the vehicle and appeared unharmed. Sharon thought they were lucky to have their car come down rear first and to have escaped more serious injury.

She said damage was done to their backyard's rocky tiers. Large rocks were knocked loose, a small statue was beheaded and a deer lawn ornament had some limbs broken.

"It got smucked," Pearce said about the deer. The former mayor is somewhat famous for his strong opinions about mule deer and how much of a nuisance they are. He sounded as if he would miss his fake deer though.

"I had that for 30 years. My mommy gave that to me."

Pearce said more barricades on Carmi Avenue would prevent vehicles from leaving the road and keep them out of backyards. He added it was fortunate no one was outside at the time of the accident.

A tow-truck company removed the Hyundai Accent earlier this morning. It was parked on Carmi Avenue up above and had winched the Hyundai Accent up the slope with a very long cable.

Sharon and Mike learned this was the fourth time a vehicle left Carmi Avenue only to slide down and land in someone's back yard. Their next-door neighbour has seen three vehicles slide onto his property this way so barricades were put into place.

To contact a reporter for this story, to send photos or videos, email Shannon Quesnel at squesnel@infotelnews.ca, call 250-488-3065, send tweets to @shannonquesnel1 or @InfoNewsPentict.