A multi-car accident in Hermosa Beach Thursday morning ended with a car crashing into a ground-floor room of Pacific Coast Highway apartment building. No one was seriously hurt.
The car, a white, four-door Chevy sedan, crashed head-first into the bedroom of one of the units at the Marina Bay Club Apartments on the 2000 block of PCH. The car knocked down the east, PCH-facing wall and intruded several feet into the living space, but no one was inside the apartment at the time of the accident. Residents at the building said that it had recently been rented to someone, but that the occupant had just left for a month-long vacation.
As of 8:15 a.m., police and fire officials were still trying to remove the car from the apartment building. The southbound side of PCH was closed between 21st and 16th streets, creating extensive backup in the surrounding area.
Observers said they thought the driver of the Chevy sedan, a man, may have been suffering from a diabetic coma at the time of the accident. He did not have any visible injuries when firefighters removed him the car, but he was having convulsions when they loaded him onto a gurney.
The man was put into an ambulance, but Sgt. Robert Higgins of the Hermosa Beach Police Department said he was not seriously hurt.
The crash was the culmination of a what witnesses described as series of erratic driving maneuvers from the man in the Chevy sedan. About 7:45 a.m., a man in a gray Toyota Matrix was heading south when he was sideswiped by the driver of the Chevy. The driver of the Matrix slowed down, looking for a place where he and the other driver could exchange insurance information, the driver of the Matrix said. But the driver of the Chevy continued on, eventually drifting onto the other side of PCH and hitting another motorist. The Chevy became stuck, and attempted to put his vehicle into reverse. The driver of the Matrix could see the reaction of the Chevy driver from across the street.
“He became very agitated. He started accelerating, his wheels were spinning, smoke was coming out and sparks were flying,” the driver of the Matrix said.
The Chevy eventually disconnected, but spun out at speed and drove off a four-foot embankment and into the apartment building. The Toyota Matrix suffered minor damage to the driver’s side door in the initial accident.
Residents of the Bay club apartment buildings described a shocking start to their day.
“I heard screeching tires, and then crash, crash, crash,” said a woman who identified herself as MJ, who was in the bathroom of her first-floor apartment at the complex at the time. “I saw smoke and then called 911.”
MJ and another resident of the complex went to check on the driver of the Chevy, still trapped in his car, and said he appeared to be having a seizure while at the wheel.
Juan, another resident of the complex, lives across the courtyard from the room where the crash occurred.
“I heard it in my apartment. My roommate and I said, ‘That sounds gnarly.’ But I had no idea that that was what happened,” he said, gesturing at the car protruding from the building.
A towing service approached the scene about 8 a.m., and a driver examined the crash site, then departed. An auto wrecker service with the right equipment to remove the vehicle without further damage to the structure was called in shortly thereafter. Higgins, of the HBPD, said that despite the fact that the car was as much as five feet below street level, that the tow truck would be able to remove it.
