76 year old Myrna Marseille swore she was standing on the brake pedal of her 2009 Toyota Camry when it crashed into the Sheboygan Falls YMCA on March 29.
Nope.
The Sheboygan Falls Police Department and the Wisconsin State Patrol held a news conference this morning in which they announced the results of their investigation: Driver error. Myrna was on the gas, not the brake, and the brakes were found to be in perfect working order.
Witnesses who Myrna said told her they saw brake lights? Well, they did...but surveillance video (click here to watch it from WISN-TV) from two cameras (the Y and the Sheboygan Falls PD share a common parking lot) shows they came on after the car hit the building. And the police say those witnesses told them that's when they saw them.
The video indicates the car moved at the same constant speed (estimated by police at 10-15 miles per hour) across the parking lot, into the parking space, over the berm and into the building.
Police Chief Steven Riffel says NHTSA (whose report won't be ready for four months) has told him there was nothing in the vehicle diagnostics to contradict the conclusion of driver error.
No decision yet on whether Myrna will be cited.
So the streak continues. The one where unintended acceleration events are investigated and found to be a case of the driver standing on the wrong pedal.
Full story including a link to the complete video replay of the news conference from The Sheboygan Press.
