WATERVILLE — By all accounts, Heidi Everson and her 17-month-old daughter are lucky to be alive.

Everson, under the influence of drugs, according to police, flew through a stop sign at the intersection of Ticonic and Oak streets late Sunday and crashed into a house, destroying the Volkswagen Beetle she was driving and doing substantial damage to the porch of the home.

The child was in a car seat, but the seat was not secured, so it tumbled on impact, Deputy police Chief Charles Rumsey said Monday. Neither mother nor daughter was injured, he said.

“The car hit the steps, and the steps are at least partially composed of concrete,” Rumsey said. “So as the car hit the curb and went up the hill and then hit the stairs and struck the house, it was just shredding the engine and the underside of the car so that when the tow truck pulled the car off the stairs, there were engine components basically falling off it.”

Everson and the toddler were taken by Delta Ambulance to Inland Hospital, where Everson allegedly assaulted a nurse in the emergency room, Rumsey said.

Everson, 42, of 13 Oak St., Apt. 5, was later arrested and taken to Kennebec County jail in Augusta, and her daughter was taken by the state Department of Health and Human Services because police were not able to find family members willing or able to take her, Rumsey said.

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Everson is charged with operating under the influence of drugs, a class C felony because she has two prior OUI convictions; assault, a class D misdemeanor, as she tried to force her way into a room at Inland where her daughter was being examined and assaulted a nurse in the process; endangering the welfare of a child, a class D misdemeanor, for driving under the influence with a child in the car; and driving to endanger, a class E misdemeanor, Rumsey said. She is scheduled to appear in Kennebec County Superior Court July 27.

Everson was driving north on Ticonic Street just before 9 p.m. Sunday and failed to stop at the stop sign at the intersection at Oak Street, Rumsey said. She also didn’t turn onto Oak Street at the T intersection where Ticonic ends, and as a result, the Volkswagen went straight, directly into the 27 Oak St. house owned by Steve Nye and Diana Foster.

Nye was watching a do-it-yourself show on television in his living room when he heard a loud crash.

“The whole house vibrated — shook,” said Nye. “I jumped up and ran out to the front porch, saw the car sitting there and I heard someone yell ‘Fire!’ so I grabbed the phone and the fire extinguisher and called 911 and the rest is history.”

Foster said she was driving home from her job at Kmart, descended the hill on Oak Street and saw the Volkswagen crashed on her front steps.

“We’ve been here 19 years and we always said, ‘One of these days, someone’s going to go right into this house,'” Foster said.

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Nye added, “How somebody’s never been killed on the street, I don’t know. They fly through here. They even have drag races on the street at night. Nobody stops at the stop sign.”

Nye, who is always doing improvements to the turn-of-the-century house, just completed renovations to the porch, he said. Sunday night’s crash not only put a big dent in the porch itself, it also broke windows, knocked the mailbox off its post, damaged the new door and frame, broke the handrail and smashed concrete blocks that are part of the steps.

Transmission and power steering fluid and oil from the car are seeping into the ground by the porch, where Nye had planted flowers, he said.

Foster’s 79-year-old mother, Marie Green, who usually sits in a rocking chair just inside the porch door, was not sitting there Sunday night as she usually does, because it was cold and rainy.

“It’s a dangerous area right there,” Nye said of the intersection of Oak and Ticonic streets. “We’ve got kids on bikes, we’ve got kids on Rollerblades, we’ve got kids on skateboards.”

Foster added, “How no kids have gotten hurt or killed, I don’t know. Cars don’t stop for the crosswalk. It’s awful.”

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Nye said a car last year ran into the fence around the park next door, and another time a vehicle crashed into a utility pole. Before the park was developed, the site was a field, and Nye said he pulled vehicles out of that field more than once.

“I’m about ready to pack up my belongings and move toward the back of the house,” Nye said.

Rumsey said Sunday night’s call initially came in as a car fire, but that turned out not to be the case.

Tim Locke, the officer who arrested Everson, conducted a field sobriety test because she appeared extremely impaired after the crash, but had not been drinking, Rumsey said.

“They suspected she was probably under the influence of some sort of drugs,” he said.

Locke said that the evaluation “doesn’t specify what particular drugs are on board, but his testing confirmed that her motor skills were impaired by drugs to the point that she was not safe to drive.”

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Everson became uncooperative and combative in the hospital and was taken to the police department, where police called Maine State Police Trooper Seth Allen, a drug recognition expert.

Allen conducted an assessment of Everson at the police station, after which she was charged with OUI-drugs, Rumsey said. Police didn’t say what kind of drug they suspect she was under the influence of.

Everson remained in jail Monday noon where her bail was $1,450 cash, according to a jail spokesman.

Amy Calder — 861-9247

acalder@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @AmyCalder17


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