After punching a hole through the front of the Springfield house, the truck kept going and punched another hole out the back before coming to a stop out on in the East Forest Park neighborhood back yard.
SPRINGFIELD - Standing in the wreckage at his home on Gillette Avenue in East Forest Park, Brian Welch said he doesn’t think his family has fully absorbed what happened a day earlier, and that is just as well.
“It’s surreal,” he said. “It being surreal is comforting as far as denial goes.”
One day earlier, just after noon on Monday, an out-of-control pickup truck driven by an 85-year-old man went off the road and smashed through the Welch home at 350 Gillette Ave.
After punching a hole through the front of the house, the truck kept going and punched another hole out the back before coming to a stop out on in the back yard.
The accident caused an unknown amount of damage to the home, displaced the Welch family for what could be four months or more, and killed the family dog.
From the outside, the house does not look too out of place, other than the two large plywood patches. Other than one metal lawn ornament that is bent, there are no tire tracks or other evidence that a speeding truck shot across the lawn.
Gerald Moreau, Brian Welch’s father in law, believes the truck, a Ford Ranger, hit the rise on the front lawn and was propelled like a rocket through the house.
“He was definitely airborne right here,” he said, pointing to a scrape on the 8-foot ceiling in the living room right in front of the hanging guts of a light fixture. “No pickup truck is that high.”
Internally, the left and right halves of the house are undamaged, but there is a channel through the middle – roughly the width of a pickup truck - where everything was pulverized and dragged out into the backyard.
Welch and his family have spent much of the last two days picking it all up and bringing it, or, to be more precise, bringing what is left of it inside.
In the living room is a pile of broken and shattered furniture, including a crushed leather chair, end tables that are now kindling, other bits of furniture smashed to bits.
Brian Welch said it was fortunate the accident happened on a Monday during the school year at a time when no one was home.
He is a teacher at Wilbraham Middle School. His wife, Kate Welch, is a nursing manager at Mercy Medical Center, and their daughter, Lauren, 12, attends school at St. Michael’s Academy.
No one was home, except Henry.
Henry was the family dog, a Springer spaniel that was adopted in November from the Thomas J. O’Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center in Springfield.
Henry, the Springer Spaniel, that belonged to the Welch family in Springfield. The dog was killed Monday when a truck drove through their house on Gillette Avenue.Patrick Johnson / The Republican
Brian Welch said Henry would commonly climb into one of the leather chairs in the living room area to sleep in the sun from the front window. That is where he likely was when the truck came hurtling through the window.
Henry never had a chance.
“Henry would sit right there,” Brian Welch said, pointing to a spot by the boarded-up window. “Obviously that was a major point of impact.”
Kate Welch points to a twisted mass of metal, wires and glass. It used to be a cast iron lamp with a glass shade, a present from when they got married.
“This is what freaks us out about Henry,” she said. “This is the first thing (the truck) hit because it was in the front window.”
Brian Welch said he heard about the accident while at school. When he was finally able to break away and come home, he was just stunned for a few moments trying to process the damage.
“And then I inquired about the dog,” he said.
“The first responders had already wrapped him in a blanket and put him in a laundry basket. They were kind enough to put him in the bed of my truck.”
He said the family arraigned to have him buried Monday evening.
Although he was just part of the family for five months, Henry had already worked his way into their hearts, he said.
“He was a 50-pound love bug,” he said. “He was my boy.”
He said that morning work, Henry climbed into bed to cuddle. “He was lying on my chest with his snout under my neck, and I was like ‘no, no. It’s time to get up.’
Every morning as the family prepared to go about their day, Henry would lie on his bed in the front room. “He would poke his head around the corner and be looking at me, and
I’d say ‘Now be a good boy today,’” Brian Welch said.
That was the last time he saw him alive.
The driver of the truck, Gordon Leith of Springfield, told police the accelerator somehow got stuck and he was unable to stop, according to Springfield police.
Investigators also found skid marks in the road in front of the house, which would show he tried to stop.
Leith complained of a hurt back injury in the crash but suffered no major visible injuries. He was taken by ambulance to Baystate Medical Center.
The accident remains under investigation, but no citations have been issued.
Brian Welch said he knows the accident was an accident, but daughter Lauren is still quite shook up.
Just hearing talk of the damage to the house and of Henry Tuesday afternoon was enough to cause her to cry.
“I know my daughter is upset, I know she has some anger," he said. “I said to her ‘you have to remember, (the driver) didn’t wake up this morning and say I want to run through these people’s house and kill their dog.’ I’m trying to help her understand it wasn’t a malicious thing.”
Their home of 17 years is for now uninhabitable until repairs are made.
The family is for the time being staying at the home of Kate Welch’s sister. They are looking to see if they can rent a house down the street that is for sale.
“It could be anywhere from two to four-plus months that we might not be here,” he said.
Three years ago, the house was seriously damaged in the June, 2011 tornado. But most of that damage was external. The chimney, the roof and siding were all damaged and needed to be replaced, but the family was still able to live in the house.
“We were able to stay in the house, we had minimal internal damage.”
He said their insurance company sent out a claims adjuster Tuesday morning, but once he got a scope of the damage, he referred them to a specialist who works with major claims.
They are also supposed to meet Thursday with a contractor to get an idea of the cost of repair and the timetable for completion.
It’s the same contractor who handled a renovation 10 years ago and the tornado damage three years ago.
“We alone are keeping him in business,” Brian Welch said.
For now, they are going through their possessions and cataloging the amount of damages.
One thing they’ve learned is the accident happened five minutes earlier than the time the police report says it happened.
The police said it occurred at 12:14 p.m., but Brian and Kate Welch found two clocks, one on a living room table and one in the kitchen wall, that had their batteries knocked loose in the crash.
Each one stopped at 12:06 p.m.
“It’s that weird,” Kate Welch said.
“We discovered that today as we were sifting through the debris. I was like ‘Holy crap!” Brian Welch said.
Throughout out the house they’ve found evidence of the ferocity of the collision.
They’ve found panels from the front exterior of the house that had tire tracks on them on them. They found metal arms of the ceiling fan all twisted out in the back yard. Also the flat-screen television in the living room has bits of glass embedded in the screen.
And then there is one of the speakers from the TV’s surround sound system. Brian Welch holds it up to show the large shard of glass sticking out of the plastic.
“I think our surround sound is shot,” he said.
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