'Smooshed like tin cans.' Bizarre snowplow crash destroys cars in Fairfield garage
Pictures shared with News 12 shows the aftermath – the plow ended up pushing that car through a closed garage door and wedging it under another car.
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Ring camera video from Fairfield police shows the moment an out-of-control snowplow slammed into a parked car in a driveway on Tahmore Drive around 7:15 a.m. Sunday. What the footage doesn't capture is the magnitude of the wreck.
Pictures shared with News 12 shows the aftermath – the plow ended up pushing that car through a closed garage door and wedging it under another car.
Next-door neighbor Meaghan Galvin said she was woken by the crash but initially thought it was the garbage truck making the rounds. When Galvin realized it wasn’t, she ran over to her neighbor’s house.
“You could see that their cars were smooshed inside of their garage like tin cans,” Galvin recalled.
“Like double decker cars in the garage,” added Susan Lovallo, who lives directly across the street.
Lovallo somehow slept through the crash across the street but soon learned that the home wasn't the only one affected.
“He came through my property, too,” Lovallo told News 12. “And then we went outside and walked around and figured out he went through four properties in the neighborhood. The final one being when he smashed into their garage door.”
The plow's path of destruction began a few hundred feet away on Glen Ridge Road when the driver left the pavement and hit a home's stone walkway. From there, he continued across the front yard next door and into that house's porch, causing one side to collapse. But the plow didn’t stop, jumping the wall at Lovallo's neighboring house.
“There's a wishing well and a tree on my side yard, and the truck went right between those two things,” Lovallo said.
Tracks in the snow show the plow continued through her front yard, across Tahmore Drive and into her neighbor's garage, where it finally stopped.
Fairfield police are investigating the crash. The driver didn't have any specific injuries but did go to the hospital, according to Capt. Antonio Granata.
“We don't know what the factors were behind the wheel at that time. Could it have been medical? Could it have been some kind of intoxicant, some kind of substance? We don't know yet,” Granata stated.
Galvin is a nurse and said when she ran over, the driver was coherent and speaking.
“He didn't seem very hurt,” she told News 12.
Lovallo said she only saw the plow driver briefly from her window.
“He was laying down in the snow face up at the end of their driveway, so we didn't know what happened to him. And then a few minutes later the ambulance came and took him away,” Lovallo recalled.
Neighbors and police said they’re just glad the crash didn’t end in tragedy.
“It definitely could've been much worse,” Galvin explained, adding that there are often people running and walking on their street.
“God bless that there was no one injured here,” stated Granata.
He thanked EMS for their swift response and commended the work of the tow operators called to the scene.
“They removed very delicately and very meticulously and very methodically that vehicle that was wedged under the other vehicle. In a situation like that, you never know when a gas tank could rupture or something could happen that could cause more damage,” Granata said.
News 12 reached out to the plow’s company for comment on the crash but did not hear back yet.
