A late-night joyride turned into a scene straight out of an action movie last Friday when a speeding car went airborne, crashed through a concrete wall, and launched the driver into a backyard swimming pool in southern Nevada.
The dramatic incident, which occurred on December 15 in Laughlin, was captured on surveillance video that shows the white vehicle becoming completely airborne, rotating through the air before striking a pool house roof and eventually landing at the edge of the water.
Homeowner Cletis Reed was inside when he heard what he described as a thunderous crash. “I figured something happened in the street, and I came out to see my entire backyard destroyed,” Reed told reporters. “Everything was just blown up. The patio is on the ground, the lady is floating in my pool.”
The footage reveals just how close Reed came to being a victim himself. Moments before the crash, he had opened the cover on his hot tub, which sits near the destroyed wall, and walked away. “I popped the cover on and thought I needed to tell my wife something,” he explained. “By the grace of God, I’m here. If I was standing there, I would have been dead.”
Miraculous Survival
What’s perhaps most astonishing about this high-flying crash? Both the driver and homeowner walked away largely unscathed. Reed and others at the scene pulled the disoriented woman from the waist-deep water. Despite being ejected from a vehicle that had just performed an unintentional aerial stunt, she was standing and talking with police just 15 minutes after the incident.
The property, however, didn’t fare as well. Reed’s 25,000-gallon resort-style pool was contaminated with motor oil, his patio was completely destroyed, and the damage is estimated at nearly $300,000. A crane was needed to remove the vehicle from the premises.
Local authorities have not yet released information about potential charges against the driver or what caused her to lose control of the vehicle at such high speed.
Reed, reflecting on the bizarre incident that transformed his peaceful backyard into a disaster zone in seconds, offered a surprisingly philosophical take: “She was blessed, and I was blessed.”
