Patrick Co. woman crashes through garage, plunges into pool

By Ashley Roberts
WSLS10 Reporter
Published: June 11, 2008

A local woman is dead after crashing her pick-up truck into a pool. It happened yesterday in the town of Claudville in Patrick County. That’s not far from the North Carolina border.
 
Emergency Management Coordinator Steve Allen says he heard about the accident on his radio. “Dispatch give out car in pool at 1859 Red Bank School Road…driver still in the vehicle.“

State police identify the driver as 80 year-old Virginia Slate of Claudville. They say Slate got into a Chevrolet pickup that was parked in a two car garage, when for some unknown reason, she accelerated forward through the garage door and landed in the in ground pool in her back yard.

A man who works in a building next door to Slate’s home tells WSLS that he pulled her out of the swimming pool and by that time she had already turned blue in the face. We asked him to talk on-camera, but he declined saying it’s hard enough just thinking about it. 

Emergency crews tell WSLS that when they arrived they performed CPR and took full life-saving measures. They even performed CPR on the way to the hospital, but Slate never re-gained a pulse. She was pronounced dead at a North Carolina hospital.

“This is the first drowning that I’ve been on,“ says Allen. “It wasn’t the best situation. We just hope we don’t have another one in Patrick County.“