Cheyenne residents Bill Lembke and Susie Degner rebuild their home after a truck crashed into it in a freak accident, lleaving a huge hole in the side of the house and the couple with at least $30,000 in damage.

The couple lives just off Central Avenue in Cheyenne, one of the busiest streets in the community. Today, Lembke considers the experience an “unnecessary inconvenience.” At the time, the accident was a little more dramatic.

How it happened

It began on October 11, when a pickup truck went over the curb and crashed into their central Cheyenne home, destroying a significant portion of their brick wall and leaving a gaping hole in their living room just around the chimney.

The Toyota Tundra crashed at their home after that it was hit by another vehicle, spinning and turning around three times before I’m crashingn to their brick wall and fireplace.

Lembke and Degner were still at work when the event occurred and were alerted by a neighbor. Another neighbor said he felt his own house shake when the impact occurred.

“Thank God we had a brick house, because if it had been wood it would have been inside our house,” Degner said.

The truck bounced into the house and was completely destroyed and mangled, with one of its wheels completely knocked off.

Degner said the scene looked like a tornado had swept through their yard.

Lembke said their home became something of a neighborhood attraction afterward, with many lookouts stopping to gawk and talk with them about the carnage.

A confused post lady even asked Lembke why they cut down their tree, to which he quickly responded by pointing to the hole in the chimney.

“She said, ‘Oh my God,’” he said.

Video captured of the event and bystanders who reported seeing it live proved that THE the truck hit a tree for the first time in the Lembke and Degner construction site, which caused he to throw a slingshot into their house. By the time the accident was finally over, THE The truck was on its side, facing the opposite direction of traffic, on Central Avenue, one way.

The driver of the truck, Jon Kinsolving, a resident of Cheyenne, miraculously emerged from the accident, a little dazed. having only suffered small scratches to his arm and back.

Bystanders told Lembke they couldn’t believe Kinsolving survived the crash.

When the couple arrived At their home, a crowd of rescuers were already on site. Although their cat Joey usually spends time in the living room near the wall, the couple was relieved to find that the feline was unharmed.

About a week after the accident, another part of the exterior brick wall collapsed in the middle of the night.

“What happened?” Lembke said he wondered, before discovering the cavity in his house had grown.

About 15 minutes later, another section collapsed and ended up on the road.

Assess the damage

Lembke estimates they suffered at least $30,000 in damage to their home. Many bricks that fell from the wall were damaged in the accident, leading the couple to consider replacing the wall with stone.

Lembke and Degner hope and I prayed that the foundation would not be damaged, which will result in repair cost to skyrocket even further.

Not only was their house damaged, but the tree the truck crashed into, which they had planted when they first moved into the house in 2005, was also completely uprooted.

As the truck crossed the yard, it also struck the branch of a crabapple tree, which fell and caused approximately $6,000 worth of damage to one of their vehicles.

Cheekbones were splattered all over the car, making it look like she had just played paintball, he said.

A metal swing was also completely demolished in the accident. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, as Degner said she asked her husband if they could get rid of the toy.

“Now his wish has been granted because he is missing,” Lembke said.

They also lose money by having to take time off work to work with insurance companies and other inspectors on the cleanup.

I lost the birdhouse too

One of the smallest and saddest damages to the house was to a small birdhouse outside the chimney, which collapsed in the second collapse.

The birdhouse was there when they moved in, and through Facebook they discovered it had been there since a previous resident put it up when he was a child in the 1970s.

“The birds loved it,” Lembke said.

The couple are also considering erecting a block wall to prevent such events from happening again.

The loss of the tree wasn’t heartbreaking for Degner, who wasn’t a big fan of the berries it unleashed in his garden each spring.

Degner takes a glass-glass-full approach to the event, seeing it as an opportunity to renovate the house. Lembke isn’t so optimistic, calling it a “giant pain in the ass.”

The couple was already in the process of landscaping their garden when the accident happened, which has completely stopped.

“In the span of a month and a half, we went from a pretty decent house to a luxury house here,” Lembke said. “We really fell into the scale of the neighborhood here.”

Vehicles crash into buildings is rare, but not necessarily rare, and Lembke said he knows of a few other cases where this is happening in Wyoming.

Fortunately, this was the first time such an event had happened to their home. A house that kept getting hit by vehicles at a T intersection in Casper was demolished and will not be rebuilt. It was not occupied because it had been hit by vehicles at least three times, the last time being an SUV that ended up in the living room.

Misery loves company

Lembke said he and Kinsolving, the truck driver, bonded over what happened.

The man who caused the accident immediately left the scene, but was later arrested for an offense unrelated to the accident.

Lembke said the damages caused by the incident are covered by Kinsolving’s insurance, while Kinsolving’s damages are covered by the man who caused the accident.

“Me and the guy in the truck are literally innocent victims of this whole thing,” Lembke said.

The event will cause all of their insurance rates to increase. Lembke worries his insurance rates could rise again if another unforeseen event like a hailstorm and he needs a new roof.

“My God, I’m going to have to get a second job just to pay my home insurance,” Lembke said.

Lembké said he noticed more bizarre accidents which is happening elsewhere and fears that “the whole world is going crazy”. He mentioned how his daughter was hit while driving by two vehicles in a short period of time a few years ago.

Degne said a truck crashed into her house It also proves how problematic speeding has become on Central Avenue, and Lembke said he tells his friends to park their vehicles in front of their house if they don’t like them.

“Because he will be hit,” he said.

His trash can, trailer and truck were all victims of reckless drivers.

The long, straight road is often the victim of drag racers who go way over the speed limit and don’t seem to care about getting pulled over by the police.

“The cops don’t patrol that area at all,” Lembke said. “They could earn a man’s annual salary sitting here. What will it take? Is someone going to have to die here to get more patrols?

Leo Wolfson can be reached at [email protected].