Richard Abshire / DMN

Helen Holt, 62, drove the car all the way through her home and into a drainage ditch behind her backyard.

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Cars run into houses.

It happens fairly often - but seldom is there an exit wound.

Helen Holt’s Garland home suffered just such an injury Wednesday, when the 62-year-old drove a neighbor’s car into the front of her own house, through the garage and kitchen, out the back, across the yard, through the fence, across the alley and into a ditch.

“I was thinking, ‘I’m just going to try to get it in my driveway and get it stopped,” she said. “But it accelerated and the brakes wouldn’t work.”

She was trying to return her neighbor’s car, a 1989 Ford Crown Victoria, by backing it into his driveway across the street from her house in the 1000 block of Quebec Drive. But, she said, the accelerator stuck and the car hit her neighbor’s pickup truck, knocking it into his garage door.

Then she put the car into drive and it took off across the street toward her house.

“I loaned it to her to go to the store to cash her check,” said Jimmy Harrington, Ms. Holt’s 67-year-old across-the-street neighbor, who said the car must have just gotten away from her.

“That’s the best I can figure out,” he said as he watched a wrecker driver hook up his Ford.

Ms. Holt scraped her forehead and bruised her nose, but remained at home after the accident.

Sitting next to what used to be her kitchen, she sipped a Natural Light and smoked a cigarette to calm her nerves.

“My nose doesn’t hurt now,” she said, “but it probably will later.”

E-mail rabshire@dallasnews.com