Impaired driver rams into house, flees, leaving $25K in damage

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Deborah Johnson was folding laundry at 8 a.m. Wednesday when she heard tires squeal, something crash, then what sounded like a train derailing one room over.

“I went into the living room to look out my bay window to see what happened. Well, what used to be my bay window,” she said. “And it was like ‘The Wizard of Oz’: All this stuff was flying by me – dry wall, debris, glass crashing. The noise was just atrocious. I have a stone house; a stone came scooting across the floor.”

A Chevy Blazer had careened off a perfectly straight stretch of Hickory Road, charged through her lawn and crashed into the living room window. The truck’s front tires were about where her bay window had been.

“I pulled the curtains back and said ‘Are you OK?’ ” she recalled. “He was just sitting there, looking at me. Stoned and stupid.”

Next thing Johnson knew, the truck lunged toward her. She screamed. Then it reversed out of her house and took off down the street.

Seconds later her neighbor poked his head through the hole in her house.

“The S.O.B. is running!” he said.

“Well, catch him!” she shouted back, presuming the driver was on foot.

“No, he’s driving away!”

Another neighbor, who was passing by when the truck plowed through the house, blocked the Blazer in the cul-de-sac of the dead-end road.

She called her husband and asked him to come home.

“He was livid,” she said. “Just said, ‘how in God’s name did someone drive through our house on a straight stretch of road with no cars, for no reason?’ ”

Police were there in minutes. Officers found the driver to be “very impaired” and uninsured, according to the police report.

Ronnie F. Dingus, 33, of Tiffany Road in Bristol, Tenn., was charged with driving under the influence, driving revoked, having no insurance and leaving the scene of an accident. The results of his blood and urine tests are not yet available. On Friday night, he was still at the Sullivan County Jail on a $2,000 bond.

According to the police report, the front, sides and undercarriage of his Blazer were heavily damaged. The report notes that the road, with a 25 mph speed limit, was dry, lit, level, straight and had “no apparent hazards.”

“All I know is my house is destroyed,” Johnson said.

Insurance adjusters estimated $25,000 in damages.

Johnson was home alone at the time of the accident, which she is grateful for. A half hour earlier, she and her nephew and her Boston terrier were standing by her antique trunk in the bay window, watching for the nephew’s school bus to turn down the road.

“We could have been killed,” she said, loudly, over the thump of hammering in the background.

Johnson and her husband, Allen, own Johnson Fence Co. on Volunteer Parkway in Bristol, Tenn. She has two sons, one a student at King College and another at Tennessee High School. She’s already paid her $500 insurance deductible, expects her premium to go up and she isn’t happy about it.

“They told me: Don’t harass him, don’t stalk him, just leave him alone,” she said. “Even though he destroyed my house, interrupted my whole life.”

Contractors estimate it will take three weeks to get the house back in order. Until then, the truck-sized hole is covered by a makeshift assortment of plywood and plastic. Dry wall dust has reached every room in the house.

“It’s nasty,” she said. “My hardwood floors not only have scratches, they have chunks missing. This is not how I wanted to spend my Labor Day weekend. If I had planned on remodeling my house, I would have done it differently.”

cgalofaro@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2531