Pick-up smashes house in hit and run
About 2:30 a.m. on Solly Avenue in Rhawnhurst, Amen Shehata, 27, was awakened by "the loudest bang I ever heard."
About 2:30 a.m. on Solly Avenue in Rhawnhurst, Amen Shehata, 27, was awakened by "the loudest bang I ever heard."
His father, brother and sister raced downstairs to see rubble all over the living room and a huge hole where a window and an outer wall once were.
"I thought it was an airplane, and all of a sudden I found the front of the house all the way inside," said the father, Rizk, a dentist.
Three concrete pillars, once outside, were inside now, one hurled all the way into a second room.
"The couches were flattened," Amen said.
Somehow, though, the TV survived.
Apparently, the culprit had wheels, not wings.
Before coming downstairs, the father caught a glimpse out an upstairs window of a large, dark pick-up truck speeding away, Amen said.
A side mirror recovered amid the debris seems to have belonged to a late-model Ford F-150, said the Temple grad, who explained he used Internet research to help identify the part.
He had a message for the driver: "Turn yourself in because you will get caught."
"It must have been a very, very big truck and a very, very strong truck and high speed," said Rizk Shehata.
The house, near Cottman Avenue, appears to be stable, an inspector from Licenses & Inspections told the Shehatas this morning.
An insurance specialist was also expected this morning, said Amen Shehata, who works in a life-insurance office himself.
The house is in the middle of a block, the street is fairly straight, and the roads were dry overnight, so the Shehatas and the police are left guessing as to why the driver lost control.
The vehicle apparently clipped a neighbor's car parked on the street, crossed about 15 feet of uphill lawn and took out some bushes, before whacking the pillars and the house.
Amen remembers a noise like an engine revving. "I guess he was reversing to get out of there," he said.
A car owned by the Shehatas also suffered damage, perhaps when the truck made its getaway.
Although he sounded calm and collected, Amen Shehata said: "No, I'm definitely angry, 100 percent."
