By Joshua Knopp/special assignments editor
mistook them for a ramp. No one was hurt.
NE Campus students had a rare sight Oct. 24 when a student’ s grandmother drove her car onto the staircase next to the library.
“I couldn’t tell it was stairs,” Jo Ann Choate said. “I thought it was a ramp.”
Eyewitness Isabel Solis was walking out of the library when she saw the car heading toward the staircase. Solis said she moved in front of the bike rack and tried to get Choate to stop but could not. Solis saw the driver shaking her head.
“That’ s when I thought something was wrong with her,” she said.
After the vehicle stopped on the staircase, Solis helped Choate out of the car, and Choate told her she was OK. While patrol officers Jeff Lang and Christopher Pomson spoke with Choate, Cpl. Henderson Aldridge kept the area secure.
“We taped it off, coned it off, and since the car’s unstable, we put a car in front of it,” Aldridge said.
Aldridge said citizens are allowed to drive on walkways, but they need permission beforehand from business services and the police department.
A towing company eventually took the vehicle for assessment.
Choate said she is the only reliable source of transportation for her grandson and another housemate.
According to NE Lt. David Herndon, people driving toward those stairs happens more often than most realize. Though he’s only been on the campus for three years, he said he has heard of someone driving that way once before, though in that case, pedestrians convinced the driver to stop.
Herndon said the handicapped parking spaces on the sidewalk nearby are a factor in cars getting onto the walkways in the first place.
Herndon said TCC police will not pursue the matter any further.
Choate was grateful no further damage was done.
“Thank God that I wasn’ t damaged and the car wasn’t damaged any more than it was,” she said. “I hated to do it. There wasn’t much to it. I just thought it was a ramp.”
