Home damage estimated at $250,000 after crash

   The calm of a working-class neighborhood in Security was shattered Sunday morning when a suspected drunken driver barely missed two young children on a street corner before he drove over a front yard, smashed through the front of a home and out the back - plowing through a piano, freezer and other items and destroying much of the home's kitchen and living room.

   Nobody was in the home at the time, and the 29-yearold driver was treated and released from a local hospital before he was arrested. An insurance investigator told the home's owners there was more than $250,000 in damage, and that the house might need to be razed and rebuilt.

   "It was so loud, I thought it was an explosion," said Dolly Pena, who lives at the house with her husband, Patches.

   The incident took place about 11:25 a.m. at 1 Otowi Drive, east of Fontaine Boulevard and Colorado Highway 85, south of Colorado Springs.

   Dolly Pena said she had gone next door to her daughter's home, where she was helping clean couch pillow covers. While there, Pena said she heard a terrific boom that friends said later was heard a couple miles to the north along Bradley Road.

   "When I looked out her backyard," Pena said of her daughter's home, "I saw this red truck in my backyard."

   According to witnesses, a red 1998 Ford Explorer was east on Fontaine Boulevard. It stopped, then revved up as it turned onto Otowi Drive, witnesses said. As it did, it drove by two young children - a neighborhood girl of unknown age who saw the vehicle, jumped off her bike and grabbed the hand of her brother to get him out of the way.

   "He (the driver) ran over their bicycle," said Bob Bresciani, a neighbor and friend of the Penas.

   The driver then jumped a curb made of railroad ties, drove over the front yard, hurdled a 1-foot high concrete porch and drove through wooden porch supports before smashing through the home's picture window. The vehicle continued through the house before it wound up in the Penas' backyard, coming to rest against a chain-link fence.

   The Penas' home was littered with broken glass and pieces of furniture and appliances. Large chunks of the piano, broken chairs, the freezer, layers of pink insulation, drywall and kitchen items were strewn about the backyard in a scene akin to a home stricken by a tornado.

   Dolly Pena said the path of the vehicle took it straight through an area of the single-story, ranch-style house where she normally sits in a dining room chair, and where her grandson, Christian, often plays when she's babysitting him for her daughter. The Penas have lived in the half-century-old home since 2003.

   The Colorado State Patrol said Justin Van Pelt of Colorado Springs was arrested on suspicion of reckless driving, reckless endangerment and an alcohol-related charge. He was taken to the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center; it was unknown if he had been released on bond. Van Pelt was alone in the vehicle, the State Patrol said.

   Patches Pena was attending a motorcycle rally in downtown Colorado Springs when it happened. As he returned, and approached the home and saw the damage, he was so shocked, he said, he fell off his motorcycle.

   The Penas probably were going to stay in their daughter's home Sunday night, Dolly said.

   Despite the tremendous damage, Patches said the important thing was that nobody was hurt.

   "This morning when I left the home, I said my prayers, for God to protect my family," said. "When I came home, my family was OK."

   "These," he said of the appliances, TV, piano and other destroyed items, "are material things."