Street light '˜torpedoes' house in freak aftermath of road crash

The 65-year-old householder narrowly cheated death during the terrifying incident in Lower Street, Pulborough, on Monday night last week.

He said he had just made a cup of tea when the top of the lamp post shot through his kitchen.

“The whole light unit exploded in my kitchen,” he said. “It came in like a torpedo and showered me in glass.

“It showered the whole of the flat in glass. If I was there in the kitchen I would have been killed.”

The man, who works as a part time taxi driver, said it was “the most bizarre experience of my life.”

The street light was smashed when a car crashed into it outside the man’s home.

West Sussex Fire and Rescue crews were called to the scene just before 9pm.

A spokesman said: “A car had collided with a lamppost, and a streetlight had come to rest in the roadway. We left at 22.05pm after making the scene safe.”

Police said that they had been called earlier to Strawberry Field in Pulborough where a man had driven off into Spinney North, crashing with parked cars before demolishing a lamppost at the junction of Moat Lane and Rectory Lane.

A police spokesman said the lamppost then “fell and smashed the glass door of a house.”

Meanwhile, the spokesman said, police officers followed a car driver north on the A29 onto the A281 before using a ‘stop stick’ to deflate the car’s tyres and halt the vehicle.

Sussex Police said in a statement that Stephen Stevens, 36, unemployed, of New Road, Billingshurst, has been charged with driving a motor vehicle when his alcohol level was above the limit and bailed to appear at Crawley Magistrates’ Court on October 3.