Larry Kline
Havre Daily News
lkline@havredailynews.com
The driver of a Subaru sport-utility wagon veered off Fifth Avenue on Monday night - driving along the sidewalk and through front yards, damaging two fences and narrowly missing a utility junction box - before crossing Sixth Street and again jumping the curb and driving the vehicle head-on into the Robins administration building.
Havre Fire Chief Dave Sheppard today said a 17-year-old boy was examined at the scene. The boy was not injured and not taken to the hospital, he said. The boy was the only person involved in the crash, Sheppard said.
Havre police officers at the scene referred questions about the driver to superior officers. No additional information was available this morning because no report had been completed. The accident was reported at 9:25 p.m.
One officer at the scene said the vehicle, which was northbound on Fifth Avenue before it veered to the left, drove onto the west boulevard and traveled more than 200 feet before it struck the building. No skid marks were visible on Sixth Street or on the Robins lawn.
The vehicle knocked out one of the lower-level windows on the eastern end of the building's south face, scattering glass. It knocked several microscopes off a filing cabinet, irreparably damaging at least one, HPS director of operations Ric Floren said today. He said the microscope is worth several hundred dollars. He said the other microscopes also may be unusable.
Floren and HPS superintendent Kirk Miller said the situation could have been much worse.
An instructor with the SUNS program - the district's alternative high school set up for kids benefit from the smaller environment - was sitting beneath the window just two hours earlier, Floren and Miller said Monday night.
“I'm just glad no one was injured,” Miller said. “Lots of things could have happened.”
Floren said another teacher was working on the other end of the building when the crash happened.
“She called and said ‘Ric, there's a car in the science room,'” he said.
Floren said a similar scenario was the subject of a practice drill was conducted several years ago by local law enforcement and emergency agencies. In the drill, a wrecked vehicle was brought to the Robins building, and students with mock injuries were transported by ambulance. In the scenario, Floren said, the wrecked vehicle was placed on the west side of the Robins steps. In Monday night's crash, the vehicle came to rest on the east side of the
