On Saturday, March 17, a man driving under the influence crashed into a Bettendorf home, causing severe structural damage to the house and the homeowners’ possessions.

Vignesh Krishnan, a neighbor of the affected homeowners, said that he had invited friends over on the night of the incident. When his guests were getting ready to leave, they witnessed a man being pulled into an ambulance on a stretcher and a massive truck lodged in the bricks of his neighbor’s house. “It was around 12:30 when we came upstairs and saw firetrucks and ambulances surrounding our neighbor’s house. We watched them cut the door off of the truck and pull the driver out.”

The truck drove through the front lawn and directly into the garage. Luckily, none of the eight people who are living in this house were injured during this accident. However, most of the vehicles that were in the garage were damaged and there is a massive hole where the driver crashed into the house.

After the accident the driver was immediately hospitalized. According to Meg McLaughlin from The Dispatch/Rock Island Argus, the driver was charged with two offenses. The first is an OWI, or “Operating While Intoxicated.” The second was failure to maintain vehicle. Both of these charges have heavy penalties in the state of Iowa, including fines, license revocation and sometimes jail, depending on the severity of the action.