MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) This is not something you see every day: a car lying upside down on top of three other vehicles in southern Minneapolis. Yet this is the scene on which Tom Taggatz came home Monday morning.
Overnight, a red, two-door Nissan lost control and crashed into three of its vehicles on the 4200 block of Oakland Avenue south. The driver fled on foot and was not found.
“You never expected to live like that in the middle of the block,” Taggatz said.
While spending a quiet weekend fishing with ice in the north, Taggatz was unaware of the commotion at home.
“It was not a good feeling to know that the photos my neighbor sent me in that house told me, ‘This is your house,'” Taggatz said.
His house is good, but three of his vehicles are not. They are total, along with the red Nissan that hit them. Parts of that car were still scattered across his lawn and even upstairs in his garage.
The car is believed to have run so fast that it hit a hill and hit the air before crashing into the vehicles in Taggatz’s driveway.
(Credit: Minneapolis Police Department)
“If the vehicles were not there, my house is here, the front living room there, I could easily have been hurt there,” he said.
The accident occurred around 2:30 p.m. The driver fled the scene but neighbors did not call 911 because they did not see the crash. Eydie Campbell, who lives two doors away from there, said she heard an explosion and thought it was a building work further.
The house rattled. It shook the whole house, “Campbell said. “Wow. I mean, if someone walked away from there, they were happy.”
Taggatz feels like the victim in this. He was selling one of the cars after spending time and money on it. The other one belonged to his deceased aunt.
“To make something like this happen now is just devastating because I just do not understand it,” Taggatz said. “I did nothing wrong. It’s just a pity that things are happening here, and there is no liability. It’s like it’s OK and that it’s not OK. ”
According to Minneapolis police, the vehicle was not reported stolen, and it was registered to a man and his son in Blaine. Taggatz is not yet sure if insurance will help him with his losses.
A GoFundMe account has been set up to help Taggatz.