Two Seymour women escaped without injury when their SUV drove over an embankment and into the Naugatuck River bed Wednesday afternoon at the senior center parking lot.
The driver, Evelyn Molner, said she was dropping off coupons at the senior center and had pulled her Ford Escape into the parking spot when her foot slipped off the brake and onto the gas pedal.
Molner’s sport utility vehicle then broke through a wooden guardrail and drove down a steep embankment.
Molner said she hit the brakes but momentum carried the vehicle down the hill.
“The momentum just pulled you down,” Molner said. “Once we went past the guardrail there was no stopping.”
Her passenger, Andrea Flach, had to be carried up the embankment in a Stokes basket because she walks with a cane. Firefighters did not want to risk her getting injured.
The SUV, which stopped at the bottom of the embankment on a sandbar, was then driven by firefighters along the sandbar to the boat launch near the Broad Street bridge, where it was then towed out.
The women were very lucky — the Naugatuck River is low because of the recent drought. Otherwise, there’s a good chance the vehicle would have been underwater.
“Although we’re not happy about the drought, it certainly helped them,” said Lucy McConologue, director of the nearby Seymour Senior Center.
