A woman who accidentally pressed the accelerator instead of the brake pedal in her sedan crashed the vehicle through steel cable barriers on the fifth floor of a Santa Monica parking garage on Monday, leaving the car dangling precariously over the edge.
The woman driving the car was safely pulled from the vehicle by a passerby who witnessed the crash around 10:30 a.m. inside the garage in the 1400 block of Fourth Street.
"Pretty miraculous that there was a gentleman there able to rescue her so quickly," Santa Monica Fire Capt. Patrick Nulty said.
The car wound up hanging over the edge of the garage.
"Everyone was sitting in suspense thinking any minute it's going to drop," witness Reign Bryant told NBC4.
Fire officials secured the vehicle with cables to keep it from falling until a tow truck was brought in and pulled the car back to safety.
The driver escaped injury.
News
Top news of the day
Witnesses expressed concern that the car pushed so far through the barrier cables and barely was kept from plunging down 40 feet.
"The back wheel had gone another foot, the whole thing would have gone over," said Ron Huysdens, who watched from next door. "It was barely hanging on."
The lower levels of Parking Structure Five reopened during the day, but the cables on level five remained dangling and in need of work.
