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September 8, 2010

Woman drives through woods before hitting house

By Christina M. Wright The Herald Bulletin

ANDERSON, Ind. — A disoriented driver left an incredulous path Wednesday night from where she left the road and entered the woods, to the house she smacked into about 1,500 feet away.

“She was southbound on Raible (Avenue), and she just kept going,” said Willie Ray, an Anderson police officer.

Police received a call Wednesday night at about 9 p.m. that a truck had left the road at the “T” intersection at Raible Avenue and West 38th Street. Five minutes later, they received a call that someone had run into a house in the 3900 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard.

“I was watching TV and I heard a big thump,” said Mary Jane Gustin, the owner of Gustin’s Market and Garden Center that is adjacent to her home.

Gustin and her granddaughter found Rosanna Delph, of Anderson, confused in her Yukon SUV and asking where the dog was that she had swerved to avoid, Gustin said.

“She didn’t understand how she got here,” Gustin said.

Officers gawked at the trail from the entry point to the house Wednesday night. The responders pondered aloud just how Delph managed to go through the wooded area where Raible Avenue ends, over two railroad tracks, through another wooded area, across a large backyard and to a rest at the Gustin residence.

Uprooted trees, smashed branches, grooves where tires slammed into ditches and a long arc across the Gustin backyard could be seen.

Ray said a medical problem is suspected. Delph, awake and talking shakily, was taken to the hospital.

No serious visual damage could be seen to the house.

“I can just hear the customers tomorrow,” Gustin said, gazing at the night’s spectacle.

Contact Christina M. Wright, 640-4883, christina.wright@heraldbulletin.com.

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