91-year-old Della Ogletree narrowly avoided serious injury in her La Grange, Georgia home after two semi-truck tires burst through her bedroom wall on August 30 in the afternoon.
“It appears that an 18-wheeler was traveling on the roadway when a set of tires with tandems broke off the trailer and rolled, striking the home,” LaGrange police explained in a statement. The statement revealed, “The tires and wheels were heavy enough and moving fast enough to break through the home’s exterior.”
The tires came into the house through the bedroom wall, where Della usually sleeps for her midday nap.
The elderly woman told Fox 13 that she routinely sleeps around that time every day.
“Something just kept telling me– ‘go take your blood pressure and your sugar, and then go fix you something to eat,’” Della said.
While listening to her intuition, she heard a loud sound.
“It sounded like a bomb had went off, and I said what in the world is that,” she recalled. A review of the scene revealed that the detached wheels went through her bedroom and another room before stopping. She described the tires as being as tall as she was.
A friend of the 91-year-old woman described the damage as being extensive.
“When I got here and saw the damage, it was just unreal. She could have been killed,” Barbara Davis said.
The walls were extensively damaged, and some of Della’s irreplaceable furniture was destroyed as well – aged from living in the same home for over 50 years. She filed an insurance claim regardless.
“It’s heartbreaking, but there isn’t anything I can do about it,” Ogletree said.
Witnesses who watched the initial detachment of the wheels described a white-colored trailer whose tires broke off and rolled away on a local roadway – although those same tires weren’t traced to Della’s house.
Police investigators said they were looking for surveillance video to track down the semi-truck that caused the auto accident.
