NEAR TRAGEDY—Bonitta Wade stands in the living room of her home at the corner of Royal Avenue and Olympic Street in Simi Valley, where her 9-week-old baby, Jack, was sleeping when a car crashed through the front of the house on Oct. 20, causing injury to Wade but miraculously not to the infant. Simi residents Deanna and Andre Stikkelman were waiting to turn onto the 3300 block of Royal Avenue last week, on their way to the doctor with their son, when they saw a car speed by and crash into a house.

Shortly after leaving their Shenandoah Avenue home, Deanna had pulled over at the stop sign at the corner of Olympic Street and Royal Avenue to speak to her mother on the phone. Right then, she saw a vehicle zoom past.

“Had I not pulled over to finish my phone call, he would have slammed into us,” she said. “I looked up and I literally saw this car just flying by. Then the hubcap was up in the air and then we heard the huge slam.”

GOOD SAMARITANS—From left to right, Bonitta Wade; her baby, Jack; neighbor Laura Perez (holding Jack); and the Stikkelman family, Deanna, Andre and Bryson, 13, an eighth-grader at Sinaloa Middle School. They helped rescue the baby, Bonitta and the driver. According to Simi Police, 33year-old Ali Sehhat of Canoga Park was driving west on Royal Avenue at about 11 a.m. Oct. 20 when he failed to negotiate a turn and swerved into the opposing lanes of traffic.

Sehhat said he was trying to avoid hitting a squirrel in the road, said Officer Vernon Trujillo.

His vehicle went up a sidewalk ramp and hit a large decorative rock in the front yard, which launched the vehicle upwards at least nine feet and into the home.

“After careening off the boulder his car was airborne and it came down striking . . . the roof and the picture window, and that’s where it partially went into the house,” Sgt. Adam Darough said.

Trujillo, one of the first officers to arrive on scene, said the vehicle hit the eave of the roof above the front door and landed a few feet into the living room, dangerously close to where a 9-week-old baby was sleeping.

Deanna estimated the vehicle was going 60 mph in a 45-mph zone, saying it happened so fast she didn’t realize where the car was until her husband said, “Oh my god, it’s crashed into the house.”

Immediately, Deanna put the car in park and the family raced over to help. The Stikkelmans were the first people on the scene.

Deanna’s hands were shaking so much, she gave her cellphone to her 13-year-old son, Bryson, to call 911.

Concerned the vehicle might blow up, Andre Stikkelman went to try to pull out the driver.

Deanna heard the screams of a woman, and at first thought they were coming from inside the vehicle. She soon realized they were coming from inside the home.

The woman, Bonitta Wade, was yelling for help, crying, “Please get my baby,” Deanna said. She tried to kick the front door down but could not.

“I screamed to her, ‘You have to get to the door, we can’t get in,’” she said. “She had to Army crawl because she had broken her leg.”

Deanna said Wade reached the door quickly, pushing past her obvious pain. As soon as the door was unlocked, Deanna and Laura Perez, Wade’s next-door neighbor, went to help her, but Wade told them to get her baby first.

“We couldn’t really see because of all the drywall dust, but we could hear him crying,” Perez said. “A bunch of stuff had fallen from the car coming through the window. . . . A big board with nails in it just missed him.”

The vehicle’s grill was just inches away from the baby, Deanna said. “It was such a blessing that kid was spared,” she said.

She lifted the crying infant off the brown blanket he was lying on and brushed the drywall away from his ears and eyes.

To Deanna it seemed forever before emergency personnel arrived, but police were actually there in one minute and paramedics two minutes later, Trujillo said. Ventura County firefighters extricated Sehhat from his vehicle and he, Wade and the baby were taken to Simi Valley Hospital.

Sehhat sustained minor abrasions to his knees from glass inside the vehicle and complained of mild abdominal pain, Trujillo said. Wade underwent surgery for her fractured knee and torn meniscus.

Except for a small bump on his head and a scratch on his leg, the baby, Jack, “miraculously” was unharmed, Sgt. Darough said.

No drugs or alcohol were involved in the incident, but Sehhat, who wasn’t wearing his seat belt, was cited for unsafe operation of a motor vehicle resulting in injury to another. Trujillo also referred him back to the DMV to have his driving ability reevaluated.

“He swerved to avoid a squirrel and . . . caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage,” Trujillo said, adding that saving a squirrel doesn’t justify risking his life or the lives of others.

Wade said Wednesday that her family’s life has been turned upside down as they now have to deal with medical expenses and repairing the damage to their home.

The accident has also given her anxiety and high blood pressure.

“Every time a truck drives by it scares me,” she said. “This is my home, this is where I live. I’m supposed to feel safe.”

Still, Bonitta and her husband, John, feel grateful.

“We’re . . . unlucky because who expects that to happen?” Wade said, her leg in a cast as she sat folding baby clothes. “But we’re lucky because it could have been a lot worse.”