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Driver puts brand new truck into friend’s house

No one hurt, house damaged in Tillicum area

Daniel Blanco was startled by an unusual sound while at home at about 8:40 a.m. on Monday morning.

“It sounded like someone dropped a couple pans, there was a bang, and the house shook a bit,” Blanco said. “I kind of panicked, I ran outside and found this car in my house.”

Blanco lives in his family home on Sims Avenue, about two houses from Seaton Street in the Tillicum neighbourhood.

What Blanco heard was the sound of a 2018 GMC Canyon colliding into the window of his sister’s ground floor room.

“There’s glass everywhere, stuff everywhere, my sister’s room is a mess,” he said.

Luckily, his sister was not home at the time and the driver, a friend of his father’s, is also OK. The damage to the home is yet to be determined. The truck worked but suffered substantial damage to the front end.

Saanich Fire arrived on scene with several engines but were soon dismissed. In the end the tow truck driver used the Canyon’s four-wheel-drive function to back it out of the house and drive it onto a flatbed.

The driver, a friend of the homeowner, had stopped by briefly with the GMC that he bought only a week ago. When he tried to reverse off the boulevard he instead drove into the yard and, into the house, he said.

“All of a sudden I was going in there [the yard], I pressed the brake, [but] the brake doesn’t work, it just went,” he said. “It went forward, I pressed the brake, I was desperate… nothing I could do… it just went. It was so scary, it happened too fast.”

reporter@saanichnews.com

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