Lisa Vidaurri’s voice was still hoarse Tuesday, raw from so muchscreaming four days earlier when she watched the back wall of herhome explode.
Vidaurri saw glass showered over her teenage daughter, who satdoing homework at the dinner table about 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Shesaw her husband pinned underneath the pickup that had plowedthrough the sliding glass door, and she listened to the pickupdriver revving the engine in a futile effort to drive away.
Police identified the driver as Brandon David Morris —- aTemecula man on probation for a previous drunken-driving conviction—- and arrested him at the scene on suspicion of drunken driving,violating the terms of his probation, and driving on a suspendedlicense. He remained jailed Tuesday in lieu of $403,000 bail. Itwas not immediately clear if he had an attorney.
Morris —- who turned 23 the day before the crash —- was tobe arraigned Wednesday.
Vidaurri, 42, said she plans to be in the courtroom, but herhusband will still be in a hospital bed. Having been laid off froma good job last year and recently working as a handyman, he iswithout medical insurance.
She said her life and that of her family have been turned upsidedown since Morris’ truck crashed into their home on EveningsideGlen. Their backyard sits on Country Club Lane, at the bottom of adownhill curve.
Area residents, some of whom want the city to install stop signsalong Country Club Lane, have long cursed the stretch of road wherethe crash happened as dangerous. In 2003, a father and his14-year-old daughter died in a crash on July Fourth in 2003 just ablock or so west of site of Thursday’s crash.
On Tuesday, even after the overnight rain, tire tracks fromMorris’ truck remained visible in the mud and grass from the streetto the spot where a wooden fence once surrounded Vidaurri’s backpatio. The crash also took out power to the neighborhood thatnight.
Lisa Vidaurri said she was in the kitchen making dinner —-rice, carne asada and even sirloin steaks as a treat —- when thelights suddenly went out.
She turned to look out the window, she said, and saw what shebelieves were the tail lights of Morris’ truck as it shot past andonto the back patio where her husband was standing with thefamily’s two dogs, Coach and Juliette.
And then the truck plowed through the wall.
“It sounded like a bomb went off,” Lisa Vidaurri said. “I juststarted screaming. I was hysterical. My daughter was hysterical.But there was nothing I could do. I saw my husband face down in apool of his own blood.”
Neighbors poured from their homes to help. Viduarri said sheremembers one neighbor leaning down to talk to her husband, tryingto keep him calm while he remained pinned under the truck.
Daughter Laurel was showered in glass from the sliding glassdoor and suffered related injuries, but she was for the most partOK —- the truck missing her by mere inches, Vidaurri said.
Son Blake, 18, was in the back of the home and uninjured.
Husband Tony Vidaurri, 44, remained at Palomar Medical Center onTuesday, undergoing facial reconstruction surgery, includingputting plates in his face. It was his second operation in fourdays.
Lisa Vidaurri said the crash “degloved” her husband’s skin,tearing it from nearly the entire left side of his face. He wasalso left with a lacerated spleen and many broken bones, includinghis ribs, she said. And he nearly lost a leg, she said, explainingthat a surgeon told her it was snapped nearly in two and filledwith mud.
Escondido police said Vidaurri was rushed to the hospitalThursday night in critical condition. He has since improved.
Palomar spokesman Leonel Sanchez said Tony Vidaurri was listedin good condition Tuesday.
Four days after the terrifying crash, the rain had washed awayher husband’s blood from the back patio. But debris —- snappedand splintered wood, the bumper and headlight from the truck amongthe mess —- was still scattered in the mud. Glass was stillspread throughout the living room where it had landed.
No one can live in the home until it is repaired, Vidaurri said.Wood covers the largest hole from the truck, but other holes in thewall remain. Debris covered the dining and living room floor,including pieces of a desk that exploded when the truck slammedinto it.
Vidaurri said that her children have moved in with their father,her ex-husband, for the time being. And she spends much of her timewith her husband.
She worries that her husband, who is a maintenance mechanic and”a blue-collar guy,” will be left permanently disabled.
The family is trying to set up a post office box for supportersto send donations. Supporters of the Viduarris set up a Facebookpage, which includes a PayPal account, for donations to help thefamily. To find it, search Facebook for “EscondidoDUI victim.”
Call staff writer Teri Figueroa at 760-740-5442.
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