OXNARD : Novice Driver Slams Pickup Into Kitchen

A 20-year-old man who was learning to drive hit a parked car and a nearby house in Oxnard before plunging through a garage wall and coming to rest in the kitchen of another house, police said Thursday.

Jorge Navarro of Oxnard was cited for operating a vehicle without a license, Sgt. Frank Devorick said. No one was injured, police said.

Navarro, an unlicensed driver, was practicing driving his friend’s pickup when he turned from Dupont Street onto San Benito Street, Devorick said.

He lost control of the pickup and struck a Datsun 240Z in the 1900 block of San Benito. Then the truck hit a garage and crashed into the rear wall of another garage, breaking through into Robert and Barbara O’Donald’s kitchen, police said.

The O’Donalds, who rent the house, were visiting a friend, but Barbara O’Donald’s three children, her mother and family friends were in the house at the time of the crash, she said.

One friend, a Seabee who recently returned from Saudi Arabia, was awakened by the crash and first thought that it was a Scud missile attack, Barbara O’Donald said. Other friends and family described it differently, she said.

“They said it sounded like a plane had crashed into the house,” O’Donald said. “They had just taken my kids out of the kitchen and put them to bed.”

The washer and dryer were destroyed, the refrigerator was pushed across the kitchen and a gas leak started, O’Donald said. “It’s a disaster area.”

The American Red Cross has paid for the family to stay three nights in a motel. Then they will borrow money from a Navy relief fund to stay at a lodge at the Port Hueneme Naval Battalion Center, where Robert O’Donald is a Seabee, Barbara O’Donald said.