LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Louisville family is now staying in a hotel after a truck crashed into their home in the middle of the night.
It happened on Wednesday as Ella and Lonnie Hardin slept inside their Hazelwood Avenue house.
"At first maybe I thought it was a bomb," Ella Hardin said. "So I called the police and I went back in the bedroom and Lonnie told me to stay back there."
"I got my gun, went in the hallway, and there was a man in a truck in my living room," Lonnie Hardin said.
After a scuffle, he said the unknown man ran into their laundry room.
"And when he did, I told him if he comes out, I'll shoot him," Lonnie Hardin said.
The man escaped before police arrived, and the couple's home of four decades was left in ruins.
When she first pulled up to the damaged house, the the couple's granddaughter, Samantha Decker, worried there were no survivors.
Fortunately, their bedrooms were untouched by the truck.
"I thought that someone was looking over them because that's the only part of the house that did not get touched up front," Decker said.
During the day, the Hardins clean up their longtime home. At night, they're staying at a cheap hotel. But there's no escape from their nightmare.
"You're afraid to go to bed at night, afraid you might not wake up," Ella Hardin said. "A car or truck coming through your house again."
Both the Hardins and Decker pointed out their location on Hazelwood Avenue, where they say speed limit signs are obscured, cars speed and the home is near a curve in the road.
"That road, it leads straight into their home," said Decker. "So if anyone misses the curb, they hit the house."
Earlier this summer, a car plowed into their garage.
Decker said they have reached out to Mayor Greg Fischer's Office and Public Works. They're hoping for a guard rail or speed bumps to be installed.
Unless that happens, even if their home is repaired, the Hardins said they're prepared to move somewhere else.
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