Woman crashes car into Santa Rosa health club pool

A woman crashed her car into a lap pool at the Airport Health Club Friday morning before being rescued by swimmers who smashed the car’s window to pull the dazed woman to safety.

The dramatic mishap occurred at 11:15 a.m. while a group of masters swimmers were doing laps in the 3 ½ foot deep pool.

“I just heard this crash and felt something hit my back and I turned around and looked and there was a car in the pool!” said 85-year-old Dick Lewis.

Lewis said he and several other swimmers where standing at the south end of the pool getting ready to swim another lap when the black Lexus sedan came plowing through the fence, ricocheted off the ladder and plunged on its side into the pool.

“If he’d pushed off he’d have been under that car,” said Lewis of the swimmer in the lane beside him.

Santa Rosa Junior College student Corey Hammell, 20, was relaxing in the hot tub with friends when he was jolted by the spectacle.

“We just heard this loud bang and this crash and the fence just exploded,” Hammell said.

Lounge chairs that were luckily empty went flying and sunbathers and swimmers scattered trying to get out of the way of the car before it splashed into the pool, he said. People began yelling at the women to open her door as the car began to sink, but she didn’t or couldn’t.

“She was panicking,” Hammell said.

Luckily there was a medical doctor and a paramedic in the pool area at the time, and they and others rushed to her aid, said Tarryn Matthies, a club manager.

With the driver’s side of the car sinking or sunk to the bottom of the pool, the rescuers focused on smashing the passenger side window to get to her. Someone used an umbrella stand to smash the window, Lewis said.

The rescuers were quickly able to get the door open, unclip the women from her seatbelt and pull her to safety, Matthies said.

“It was very heroic how they were able to get her out of there in no time,” she said.

One rescuer received minor glass cuts to his torso and the driver received minor cuts as she was pulled to safety. She was taken to Kaiser Health Center for treatment. Lewis said he was uninjured by the fence that struck him.

It was extremely lucky that the accident occurred on a Friday morning and not a day when every chair in the pool area is taken up, Hammell said.

“If it was summer or even on just a weekend someone would have died,” he said.

Officer Danny Alconcel of the California Highway Patrol said the woman, described as around 70, appeared to have been pulling into a parking space when she drove through the fence. She told witnesses her brakes failed, but that has not been confirmed, Alconcel said.

Hammell doubts it was the brakes that were to blame.

“For the fence to explode like that, she was definitely picking up some speed,” he said.

The car was removed from the pool shortly before 1 p.m. as workers picked leaves, concrete chunks and glass out of the pool, which was expected to be closed for a couple days, Matthies said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.