Days later, Jacqui Czender is still shaken by the experience: unknown to her, a metal bar impaled her car as she drove and “skewered the door shut.”

“It was a terrifying experience,” she said. “The most difficult part was realizing had anybody been sitting there or had it been three feet over, just thinking of a metal rod like that piercing a human is an absolutely frightening thought. I had a lot of difficulty retelling the story because that is the part where you start to lose it a bit.”

Czender, 43, was driving her brand new SUV on Hurontario St. in Mississauga on Wednesday afternoon when she heard a “deafening” sound.

“It sounded like white noise static, but at an incredibly high volume,” she said.

The middle school teacher had just come off Highway 403 en route to Brampton and was slowing down when she heard the sound.

She stopped the SUV and walked around to look for structural damages. She saw nothing.

Czender restarted her $40,000 vehicle only to hear the sound again.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a black, vertical strip running along the middle of the rear passenger side window. At first, she thought the seatbelt had become dislodged.

“I went to touch it and it was metal,” Czender said. “That’s when I got scared. It had penetrated the roof, and my first instinct was that something had fallen from the sky.”

Driver Jamie Gardiner, who had stopped to help, said Czender jumped out of her car. She was shaking and her voice was fluttering, he said.

Looking closer, it seemed the 2.5-metre-long metal bar — the kind used to reinforce concrete — had come in through the rear floor of the car, exited and then re-entered the passenger-side door, and finally pushed through the roof.

“It had skewered the door shut,” Czender said.

The sound she had heard was the bottom of the bar scraping along the ground. She called 911 for police and for a tow truck. Meanwhile, Gardiner gave her water to calm her nerves.

“It was really the damndest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Gardiner. “It was more shocking to me to look at. I think it would have definitely startled me if it had happened in my car.”

“I mean, when have I ever seen a car impaled? Never.”

Czender is holding on to the bar for insurance purposes.

The bizarre afternoon only got worse when Czender’s older sister, Kim, came to the Oakville collision centre to provide a ride home. As the tow truck driver began to haul the SUV into the shed, he drove over Kim’s foot. She sustained tissue damage.

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Czender said her friends and family think she should buy a lottery ticket with her good luck. But she sees no need.

“I think I won the life lottery.”

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