Car crashes into South End property for third time in two years

The loud bang woke 16-year-old Mily with a start.

Her mother, Randi Burns, fainted a month earlier on Christmas Eve, after compounding complications from a stomach bug and her small lymphocytic leukemia, and landed hard. Mily worried that it happened again. In the panicked darkness at 1 a.m., she didn’t notice that the wood-paneled wall at the foot of her bed had bowed in, splitting the white baseboard in two.

From her bedroom in the basement, Burns heard Mily screaming and feared the worst.

“I knew the moment I heard. I can’t even – that sound,” Burns said. She fumbled for her glasses, couldn’t find them and instead bounded up the stairs. “I knew in that instant – there’s a car in her room.”

Burns, her two children, and her mother, Julie Jacobson, moved into their home at 366 South Main Street, where Broadway Street empties out, at the end of last summer. They knew from the seller that, twice in the previous year, drivers had failed to make the turn and crashed onto the property. They didn’t think it would happen again.

“We really said, ‘What are the odds?’” Burns recalled.

On January 24, just after 1:15 in the morning, a black Chevy Silverado veered off the turn, mowed over a recently-installed black chain link fence and slammed into the side of the beige, 1934 cape.

From the sidewalk, the damage looks relatively subtle – splintered siding and a tarp and plywood provide a band-aid patch over the area of impact. But the force of the crash moved the house six inches off its base and cracked the foundation through both sides. The insurance company said it will need to be torn down rather than repaired.

After six weeks of looking for housing in the area – Burns moved back in with her ex-husband and Jacobson went to a hotel. They eventually found an apartment in Concord that would take their family, including a dog, two cats and a rabbit, Bun Bun. Insurance will cover the expenses, as well as rebuilding the house.

For Burns and her family, though, a new structure won’t solve the dangerous curve in the road that multiple drivers have failed to negotiate.

Jacobson bought the house last year after Burns and her husband split, intending it as a place for her daughter to recuperate medically and emotionally.

Every night since the crash, Burns has woken up between one and two in the morning, something a new house can’t fix.

“Are we going to be safe there?” she said. “Am I going to be able to sleep?”

A new home

Julie Jacobson had lived most of her life around Rapid City, South Dakota. She came to New Hampshire for typical reasons that people in their sixties make a big move.

“I just wanted to be where my family was,” she said.

Her daughter, Burns, had moved to Bow with a then-new husband a few years prior, and Jacobson would video call her young granddaughter, Mily, every day. Jacobson had also had a few heart attacks. A few years after Burns left South Dakota, Jacobson followed, moving into the Bow house and helping raise her grandchildren, including Oliver, currently 12.

Over the next few years, Burns said, her relationship deteriorated. Intending to separate, she began saving up for a place of her own. Her blood cancer diagnosis two years ago made that a lot harder.

Jacobson bought the house in Concord last year – just minutes from the Bow town line and schools – so that her daughter could move in after the end of her marriage.

While both have a persistent longing for the plains of South Dakota, Burns and Jacobson both felt more at home on South Street than they have in the decade since arriving in the Granite State. Jacobson covered her walls on the second floor in prints and decor with a “zen” theme. Burns changed her mind about which shade of purple to paint the basement after the first coat. They bought a sectional that didn’t quite fit in the living room. They adopted two cats.

The night of the crash, police arrested 43-year-old Scott Fortin of Manchester on a felony charge of aggravated driving under the influence and traffic violations.

The truck was seized, and the gas and water lines, both damaged, were shut off. Burns and her children stayed in Bow.

Jacobson went back to the house and sat in her parked car in the driveway, waiting for the sun to rise.

‘Ongoing risk’

Alissa Jelley knew almost exactly what the family was going through – she’d sold Jacobson the house last year.

In 2024, two drivers crashed their cars into 366 South Main within six months. The first hit the garage. The second slammed the house, causing disruptive but fixable damage to the foundation.

Jelley moved to Concord with her husband, Don, in 2018. It had been his childhood home.

After the December crash, she wrote a letter to the city requesting a review of the intersection and what could be done to make it safer.

“We believe the frequency of these accidents is not only alarming but poses an ongoing risk to everyone in the area,” Jelley wrote. “Whether through enhanced traffic control measures, improved signage, or any other possible solutions, we are eager to work together to prevent further incidents from occurring.”

Both the transportation policy and the traffic operations committees reviewed Jelley’s request. They suggested additional yellow chevron curve signage and a new white fog line in the short term, which were all added in May 2025.

They also suggested a reconfiguration of the intersection for the long term, which could adjust the end of Broadway from a curve that bends up into South Main to a hard T-stop at Wiggin Street. In current city spending plans, that change is slated for 2035.

Jelley couldn’t attend the meetings where committee members discussed the intersection. Not long after the December 2024 crash, Don got pneumonia and was sent to intensive care. He died a month later.

While she’s glad for the improvements, she doesn’t think they went far enough.

“It felt like we needed more physical protections,” she said. “Signs are one thing. Signs aren’t going to stop a drunk driver.”

Ultimately, Jelley decided to sell the South End home. Battling her own health issues, she moved back to Connecticut to continue endometrial cancer treatment closer to her family. She is now cancer free.

Learning from Burns that the home will be demolished was hard news for Jelley.

“That was the last tangible piece I had of my husband,” she said.

Burns and Jacobson put a chain link fence around the property when they moved in so that their pets, including Bun Bun, could play in the yard. It was never intended to stop a pickup truck. But it did slow it down, potentially preventing a more forceful and direct hit on Mily’s bedroom.

They hope the city will consider installing physical protections along the curve in front of their house. They also think the intersection of Broadway and Rockingham, where it is well-known that drivers often blow past the all-way stop signs, could be better leveraged to slow down approaching traffic.

“This is not our fault,” Burns said. “A lot of people do fly around that corner… it needs something other than a sign.”

City Manager Tom Aspell told the Monitor that a request for a barrier could be placed with the city council and considered by committees, just as Jelley’s letter was last year. He noted that the city previously has installed high granite curbing – taller than a regular curb but shorter than a wall or fence – at other places where drivers taking turns at speed is a concern, pointing as an example to the roundabout where Franklin and North State Streets cross.

For now, the mother-daughter pair are deciding whether or not to rebuild. The alternative is tearing down the house and selling an empty lot for a loss. Rebuilding would give them a chance to make the home their own, and to rearrange the layout so that the bedrooms face away from the road.

With three crashes in the last two years, waiting another ten years for the intersection to be reconfigured doesn’t feel like a viable option.

“I mean, ten years…” Burns said. “The odds aren’t good.”

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