Brittany Horn

The News Journal

Charles Moulden's home has been hit five times since May 2009, most recently on Sunday.

The family has spent thousands of dollars on repairs and has been dropped by two different insurance providers.

DelDOT will re-evaluate the intersection following Sunday's crash but doubts a guardrail will be recommended.

Charles Moulden is afraid to be in his home.

He doesn't sit on his couch anymore, worried another vehicle will smash into the side of his house and into the living room. He won't let his son play in the backyard for fear another SUV will blast through the fence and into the pool. And he doesn't park his car in front of his home after it was plowed into in 2009.

Vehicles have crashed into his property five times since he moved into his home near Newport in 2008, and despite numerous requests to the state Department of Transportation, all he and his family have received is an oversized yellow arrow sign indicating a left turn.

On Tuesday, that sign lay mangled in the middle of his once-full pool, two days after an SUV plowed through his fence and into his backyard.

"I can't lay on the couch without being nervous," Moulden said. "And every time you hear screeching times, it's like, do you run left or right? You never know."

The first time, it was a dark-colored sedan that came through the front yard and smashed into a vehicle parked in their driveway in May 2009. The second time, a white Subaru Outback jumped the curb in September 2010 and plowed over the sign meant to warn drivers of the turn. Less than three months later, a large white pickup truck smashed through their fence and deck, crashing into the kitchen wall.

The third crash, which left the family out of thousands of dollars and their home for nearly a year, prompted Moulden's fiancée, Tara Radcliff, to reach out to DelDOT, asking for better protection for their home at Newport Gap Pike and Boxwood Road. The backyard of their house sits at a T-shaped intersection, meaning that drivers who fail to navigate a left or right turn end up in their yard.

DelDOT told the family in 2011 that "this particular location does not warrant the placement of a guardrail. Unwarranted guardrail could result in additional safety concerns and the guardrail itself could become a hazard to the traveling public at the proposed location," according to an email Radcliff received from the state.

Despite the answer, they've continued to ask after more crashes occurred. In January 2013, a Dodge pickup truck nearly split in two when it came through their front yard and his a guard line that supports overhead power lines. The last straw was Sunday, when the family was forced to file its first claim with its third insurance provider after an Acura SUV ruined their backyard and pool.

They've already been dropped by insurance providers twice because of the repeated crashes and now pay a premium rate because of their high number of claims. Radcliff said it's been difficult to even find an insurer that will cover them.

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DelDOT put up a larger sign than the one originally posted, the couple said, and recommended that a fluorescent yellow object marker be placed on the concrete median to alert drivers. But Moulden pointed out that these steps have done very little. People continue to miss the turn, crashing directly onto their property two more times since its installation.

Bud Freel, a DelDOT spokesman, said Wednesday that due to the layout of the intersection, a guardrail could pose more danger to motorists, as guardrails are not meant to withstand "head-on, perpendicular crashes," he said. Engineers with DelDOT also examined how drivers will deflect off the guardrail, potentially injuring other drivers on the road.

"Any motorist who is driving properly would have no problem to realize that they need to turn there," Freel said of the intersection. "Taking all that into context, though, we are actively investigating again the crash information. ... Hopefully looking at all that information, we will be able to come up with some sort of solution that will protect both Mrs. Radcliff and her family and motorists."

Freel said DelDOT is considering signs further down the roadway warning of the upcoming turn and additional traffic measures to alert drivers. Freel met with Radcliff on Tuesday.

For a family with a 4-year-old son, the couple says the danger requires much more than road signs.

"I said to him, 'So is it going to take someone dying here for you to do something?'" Radcliff said. "Because I know for sure, if it hadn't been raining [Sunday], someone would have been in the pool."

The steel walls of the above-ground pool were mangled and trees and a fence shielding the property from the road were torn down.

Carly Henry was driving behind the man who plowed into the yard Sunday and watched him get into a crash earlier down the road at Read Avenue and Boxwood Road. Henry and her boyfriend began following the vehicle to see where it went as it fled from the crash scene. She said it sped down the road and nearly out of their sight toward Newport Gap Pike.

By the time Henry caught up, it was sitting in the back of Moulden's yard, with pool water flowing into the street.

"He was flying," Henry said. "We couldn't even catch up to him. ... It's kind of alarming to have a straight road running right into your house. If someone can't make that turn, they are going to crash right into your home."

Video taken from Moulden's outdoor surveillance camera – which he installed after multiple crashes – shows the vehicle speeding toward Newport Gap Pike and Boxwood Road, where it failed to stop.

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Now, Moulden said, his family can't come over and spend time outside. He wouldn't bring his own child to someone's house that had repeatedly been run into, he said, and he doesn't want to jeopardize the safety of anyone he loves.

The family rarely spends time on the first floor of their home, he said. After the truck hit the road-facing side of his house and destroyed trees, a fence and the entire side of the home in 2010, they started to stay on either the second floor or in the basement. The first floor feels too vulnerable, he said.

"Every time, we're back to square one," Moulden said. "What else do you do?"

They worry he won't be able to sell the property after all the damages and crashes.

Moulden said he's prepared to take a loss on the house, even after eight years of remodeling and money spent. Despite the many insurance claims, he said he and Radcliff have invested thousands of dollars of their own money to rebuild their deck and shed, replace fallen trees and install boulders along the edge of their property in hopes of slowing down cars.

He even installed a spotlight on the new sign to alert drivers at night to the turn. At this point, the couple said, they're ready to put up a sign with their son's picture on it, saying, "It could have been me."

"I feel like I have to move," Moulden said, motioning to his destroyed backyard. "That, to me, is the closest thing to my son, my nieces and nephews. ... You can't put a value on that."

Contact Brittany Horn at (302) 324-2771 or bhorn@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @brittanyhorn.