I drove into Cordoba, Vera Cruz Wednesday for a three day visit to my beloved 19 year old niece. (My wife thought it was a visit to her brother, but what does she know?) She and I have had an almost father-daughter relationship since she was little more than a micro-dot. Her dad lives in the neighborhood but they have never developed an affectionate bond, though he may have driven her to school at times. Her mom lives in California, so she is with Grandma. She was ripe as a small child for a father figure to move in.
She works and lives in Cordoba, but goes to Saturday University in Vera Cruz. A week or two ago, she was sitting in a classroom which doubles as a reception room.
Suddenly, there was a tremendous Wooooomphhh! And a late model Dodge Ram was suddenly parked next to her. In the classroom.
She said it is an ordinary building, which here means cinder block construction with vertical and horizontal reinforced concrete beams for strength. The center of the front of the building involved a metal frame with plate glass (I think) door assembly
The receptionist normally sits inside the door at a desk with her back to the door (which does not compute to me, but that is what my lovely niece said). When the Ram rammed the door, the entire metal assembly ended up inside the classroom, with zillions of marble shaped pieces of glass all over the floor. The reception desk ended up shoved around 3 feet into the room, which means the receptionist would have been ‘rammed’ but she had stepped out for a bottle of water.
Niece instantly went into hysterics. She described herself as frantic and meaningless waving of her hands and screams in general.
Her boy friend heard the thump, turned around and saw the Ram in her classroom. He sprinted over and around the pickup and got her under control. She calls him her Hero. When she introduced him to me as “My Hero” I greeted him as Señor Hero which really tickled their funny bone. He does bear a slight resemblance to Clark Kent…
The pickup driver turned out to be a government employee or police official, she was not clear on that. He was driving down the street and a car passed him at a high rate of speed then had to cut into to avoid an oncoming car, which forced him onto the sidewalk, thus into the door of the building. That car did stop and I assume will be paying for serious repairs to a Ram and a building.
The class moved to another room.
No one was hurt. But, if that Ram had gone very slightly to the right it might have hit the cinder block walls and she might have been buried in a mound of cinder blocks. The reinforced beams can only do so much when the blocks are rammed. That was a very close call.