Boy catapulted across room when truck hits Santa Rosa home

Liam Fitzsimmons was fast asleep in his Bennett Valley home at 4 a.m. Monday when a pickup crashed into his bedroom, split his bed in half and catapulted him across the room and through a closet door.

The 11-year-old, who was not badly injured, remembers waking up in his closet amid crumbled plaster and wood. A few feet above his head, bits of drywall hung from the torso-sized hole he had created.

“It’s a miracle he’s alive,” said the boy’s mom, Nicole Marlatt, who at the time of the crash was sleeping just feet away. “I woke up to this horrible crash; it felt like an earthquake. It was terrifying.”

Fitzsimmons remembers waking up feeling confused and disoriented.

“I yelled ‘Mommmm!’” Fitzsimmons said, lightheartedly describing his memory of the crash. “My bed is parallel to the wall, so I was amazed when I was in the closet and I looked up and saw headlights shining in my bedroom. My bed was everywhere.”

By late morning on Monday, Santa Rosa police had tracked down the suspected driver of the late-model red GMC that slammed into the front of the Marlatts’ home and through the boy’s bedroom wall, then fled the scene.

Authorities arrested Timothy Charles Bendana, 23, at a family member’s home in Novato and charged him with three felony counts, including hit-and-run with injury, possession of marijuana and running a hash lab.

“The truck had major damage, and there is no indication the driver intended to stop,” said Sgt. Ryan Corcoran of the Santa Rosa Police Department. “We also found evidence in the driver’s home that indicated he was growing marijuana and producing hash that he intended to sell.”

Police said Bendana was running the drug operation from his Trinity Court home, about two blocks from the crash on Calaveras Drive, near Sacramento and Yulupa avenues in east Santa Rosa. They said they discovered glass pipes, marijuana plants and other materials needed to make hash at Bendana’s home. Police seized the drugs and the driver’s truck Monday. No further information was immediately available about the amount of drugs confiscated or whether the driver was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Corcoran said the crash was still under investigation. Bendana was being held at Sonoma County Jail on $100,000 bail.

Family members said they viewed another neighbor’s video surveillance footage, which they said captured Bendana slamming into the house, then fleeing on foot.

“He hit the house and then ran away, then he came back to the truck and grabbed something and started running in one direction, then he turned around and ran the other way,” said Donald Marlatt, the boy’s father. “He didn’t even brake when he came through the wall, and my son sleeps against the wall. It was scary.”

Donald Murlatt, who had left for work about 30 minutes before the crash, returned home in a frenzy at about 4:30 a.m. He came back Monday afternoon to survey the damage during daylight hours. A section of the home’s exterior - roughly 6 feet in width - was demolished. Pieces of insulation hung from the walls, electrical wires dangled in the air, and inside the bedroom, the wooden bed frame shattered and the mattress split in half. Chunks of drywall littered the floor.

“My son flew across the room and hit the wall,” Donald Murlatt said. “Thank God it wasn’t worse.”

The Murlatts’ other son, age 2, slept just feet away from the crash in a bedroom adjacent to his brother’s.

Nicole Murlatt said she called 911 when she saw headlights from her son’s doorway and realized what had happened. Roughly an hour later, Fitzsimmons was transported by ambulance to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries, including a baseball-sized surface scratch on his back and a cut on his foot.

The boy’s mom said he seemed well enough to attend school today, but hours into the school day, he started to feel some pain.

“I think the adrenaline wore off and he got sore,” Nicole Murlatt said.

Nicole Murlatt said she and her two sons are staying at her mother’s house in Santa Rosa while electrical and plumbing crews repair the damage to the home, which they rent.

“He just wanted a waffle sandwich today, and to sleep,” she said, describing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with waffles.

Bendana was expected in court Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Fitzsimmons said he’s ready to go back to school.

“There’s this ginormous scrape on my back and my foot hurts, so I might have to wait one more day,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Angela Hart at 526-8503 or angela.hart@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ahartreports.