By Jennifer Reeger
The Tribune-Review
SALEM, Pa. — Jack Whitacre heard and felt a loud crash while standing inside his mobile home in Salem just after noon Tuesday.
“I thought it was just ice falling off the roof of the house,” Whitacre said.
But after heading outside to investigate, he discovered a vehicle had jumped a retaining wall next to his hillside mobile home, striking the residence slightly before bouncing back. The driver, Lewis M. Reich, 86, died of natural causes, police said.
Reich, who lived a few homes away on the opposite side of Sheffield Drive in the Cloverleaf Estates East community, suffered a medical emergency while behind the wheel of his 2004 Hyundai Sonata. Reich lost consciousness while traveling up the steep hillside, state police Trooper Brian Gross reported.
Reich’s vehicle accelerated at a high rate of speed, drove through a snowy yard and up and over a 3-foot-high wood retaining wall along Whitacre’s property.
The vehicle, which was precariously perched on the remnants of the wall, began to slip when paramedics tried to remove Reich from the vehicle.
“We had to stabilize the vehicle to get him out,” said Forbes Road Assistant Fire Chief Steven Rosatti.
Firefighters propped the back end of the car up with various pieces of wood.
Reich could not be revived and was pronounced dead at the scene by Westmoreland County Deputy Coroner Timothy O’Donnell.
Connie Harrity, who lived two doors away from Reich, said he was “just a nice person.”
She saw him at his mailbox just two days before his death.
“I said, ‘Hey good looking,’” Harrity said. “He looked at me and smiled.”
Neither Whitacre nor his wife, Jean, who are both 76, were injured, though the accident “shook us up,” he said.
It also caused damage to their home.
Some of the skirting of their mobile home was ripped away during the accident. Their front porch also sustained damage, most likely after being hit by flying pieces of wood from the retaining wall.
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