A luxury car driver smashed into a garden wall at a Sutton Coldfield home causing extensive damage but then allegedly drove off without leaving their details.
The crash occurred at the junction of Somerville Road and Jockey Road shortly at around 10.45pm on Saturday (March 17) with an eyewitness reporting seeing an ‘old-style Porsche Cayenne’ hit the wall and fence by the house on the corner, with the driver then slipping away into the night in snowy conditions, without leaving their details.
Furious homeowner Jane McGeoghan discovered the damage the next day, which now needs an extensive repair and means her family cannot access their property through their main access gate.
The mum-of-one told the Sutton Coldfield Observer : “The driver of a car, which we believe to be a Porsche, drove in to our wall, presumably due to the bad weather. They knocked a wall and road sign and didn’t stop to give details and drove off.
“To not come back is just not the decent thing to do. I just think someone really should have knocked the door. We would have understood given the weather conditions.
“It’s common decency really to say ‘we are really so sorry’.
“The problem is now we can’t open the gate, it’s dangerous for us to walk out that way and walk the dog.
“We have now reported it to the police.”
Due to the bitter icy and snowy weather, the family didn’t discover the damage until mid-afternoon on Sunday.
“We didn’t hear the crash at the time but left a note on our gate when we discovered the damage on Sunday afternoon,” Jane said. “The weather was bad and it was snowy so we hadn’t left the house until the afternoon.
“When we found the damage we left a sign on the gate to see if anybody had witnessed the incident. One neighbour did say they heard something.
“We had a call on Monday night from a chap to say he was driving past and knew the time as he was picking up his daughter. He said the person responsible was the driver of a Porsche Cayenne, an older model. And that it was blue or black.
“Our house is on the corner of Somerville Road and Jockey Road and our garden is lower than the road. We have lived here just over a year and in the last bad weather we had, I was pinned by the window worried somebody was going to skid down at that corner and hit us.
“We believe the Porsche had come from the Sutton side of Jockey Road and over the railway bridge but has then skidded and gone up and over the kerb, to the left of the road sign, hit the wall and fence and also hit trees at the edge of our property. It’s lifted the road sign and our gate. If the trees weren’t there the car would have been in our garden.”
Birmingham City Council has been asked to fix the damage to their sign in the short term, and to put up safety measures in the long term. Jane said her neighbours were aware of other accidents at that junction. Jane is worried that the ‘dangerous junction’ could pose a risk to schoolchildren.
The 40-year-old said: “The council need to fix their road sign, so we can repair our wall, gate and fence.
“But my second request is for safety barriers or guard rails. The kids from Sutton girls’ school use that junction and cars generally come over the brown of the hill and then turn very fast.
“I am worried that one of the schoolgirls will be hurt.”
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: “The accident was reported to us on Sunday afternoon. As it was a non-injury accident we referred the caller to report it to her home insurers and Birmingham City Council highways.
“If anyone has any information on the driver responsible for the accident they are urged to call our non-emergency number 101.”
