An accident in Bohmte, Lower Saxony, ended with a car lodged firmly in the roof of a barn three metres above the ground on Saturday evening.
For reasons which are still unclear, a car broke through two hedges, hit a boy who was playing on a trampoline, and was then catapulted into the roof of an adjacent barn.
The seven-year-old boy suffered life-threatening injuries. All five occupants of the vehicle, two adults and three children, were also injured, one of them seriously.
According to initial investigations, the vehicle left the road at high speed at around 8pm, and collided with a parked car and broke through a hedge.
The car then drove into the garden of a neighbouring house, which was about 1.5 meters below, and hit the trampoline with the child on it.
A police spokesman said on Sunday that the vehicle was probably thrown into the air by uneven ground and crashed into the barn at a height of about three meters.
The boy who was hit by the car while playing was flown to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and remains in critical condition.
The 43-year-old passenger in the car also suffered serious injuries, while the other four occupants – including three children – were slightly to moderately injured.
A local resident described hearing the accident to DPA: “There was a loud crash. We just thought, 'What's happened?'...We ran outside and saw the car in the roof.”
“It was like something out of an action movie,” said a fire department spokesman, according to Stern.
Firefighters first secured the roof to prevent the vehicle from sliding out, before using a crane to recover it from the building.
The police emphasized there was no indication that the driver was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
"A breathalyser test was negative, we took a blood sample and confiscated his driver's license," a spokesperson told Stern on Monday morning.
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Images from the scene of the accident showed a trail of destruction. Branches had been torn off trees in a garden and broken bricks lay on the lawn. The trampoline was destroyed.
About 80 emergency personnel responded to the incident, including firefighters, paramedics, the Technical Relief Service (THW), an emergency pastoral care team, and two rescue helicopters.
The investigation into the cause of the accident is ongoing, with the police asking for any witnesses to come forward.
Mayor Tanja Strotmann of Bohmte expressed her sympathy for the families affected: “Our thoughts are especially with the injured child and his family.”
With reporting by DPA.
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