A car plowed straight through an iron fence and into a home near Chuck Avenue and South Goodlett Road in Memphis’s Parkway Village neighborhood early Wednesday morning, seriously injuring a man and leaving a 3-year-old child with scrapes and bruises. The driver was also hospitalized and has since been detained by police, who are still sorting out what happened in the moments before the vehicle tore through the residence.
According to the FOX13 Memphis, officers were called to the home just after 6 a.m. Wednesday after the Memphis Police Department reported that a car had crashed into the residence. The impact was severe enough that the vehicle didn’t just clip the house — it entered the home completely, according to the outlet. A man inside was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, and the driver was detained by police.
The driver, meanwhile, was also taken to the hospital and is expected to recover, per the same report. WATN-TV put the injury count at three people total, while the earlier police account cited one serious injury. Per the victim’s sister, the 3-year-old received only scrapes and bruises, was not seriously hurt, and was not taken to the hospital.
The Crash Site
The crash site is in Parkway Village, near Chuck Avenue and South Goodlett Road.
The crash site is in Parkway Village, near Chuck Avenue and South Goodlett Road. This isn’t the first time the intersection has drawn a heavy police response, either — in August 2022, a two-car accident at Chuck Avenue and South Goodlett Street escalated into a verbal confrontation and gunfire directed at responding officers and bystanders, a case that resulted in attempted murder charges, according to Memphis Police Department records.
What Charges Could Follow
It remains unclear what charges, if any, prosecutors will file against the detained driver.
A Nationwide Pattern of Building Strikes
Crashes involving commercial buildings and related structures occur more than 100 times a day across the country, contributing to up to 16,000 injuries and more than 2,600 deaths annually.
Locally, the numbers paint a similarly grim picture. Regional traffic safety data compiled this year shows a severe or fatal traffic collision occurs in Memphis roughly once every five days, placing the city among the highest-risk metro areas in the nation for serious vehicular incidents, according to ThatCarHitMe.com. Wide arterial roadways across the city have been linked to the elevated crash frequency.
