A rolling truck pulls into a real estate office in downtown Vicksburg – The Vicksburg Post
A rolling truck pulls into a real estate office in downtown Vicksburg
Published at 6:23pm Tuesday, September 12, 2023
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A dump truck was seen after crashing into the wall of Perry Properties, 1207 Walnut St., Tuesday afternoon. (Ernest Booker/Vicksburg Post)
A break room at Perry Properties, 1207 Walnut St., was severely damaged after a dump truck crashed into the building Tuesday. (Ernest Booker/Vicksburg Post)
The front end of a dump truck is seen after it crashed into the wall of Perry Properties, 1207 Walnut St., Tuesday afternoon. (Ernest Booker/Vicksburg Post)
A large hole was left in the wall of Perry Properties on Tuesday after a garbage truck drove through it. (Ernest Booker/Vicksburg Post)
A large hole was left in the wall of Perry Properties on Tuesday after a dump truck drove through it. (Ernest Booker/Vicksburg Post)
Gertrude Young was finishing her workday at Perry Real Estate on Tuesday when she heard a loud noise down the hall, followed by a knock on the door.
“I was sitting in my office in the hallway when I heard this big noise,” Young said. “Then Mr. (Ronnie) Muirhead comes knocking on the door and asks me if I’m the landlord. ‘My truck just crashed into your building,’ he said.”
A dump truck owned by River City Roll-Offs, which was transporting debris from a construction project at The Vicksburg Hotel, drove through the parking lot between that building and Perry Real Estate at 1207 Walnut St. Around 4:30 p.m
The truck crashed into a brick wall at the real estate office and left a large gap in the side. The truck cab extended more than a foot into the building.
The front office and break room were severely damaged. Roberta Berry, the building’s owner, said repairs could take months, but fortunately the building was mostly empty and no one was injured.
“I’m glad no one was hurt,” Perry said.
The front office is where Daniel Jennings runs his small home building business, Cottage Home King. No one was there when the accident happened, which was fortunate. The front of the truck came to rest just inches from the desk where Jennings’ daughter, Keanu, usually sits.
“I wasn’t here. Thank God my daughter wasn’t here; she was out running errands,” Jennings said.
Renovation of the nearly century-old Vicksburg Hotel, a city landmark at the corner of Clay and Walnut streets, has been underway for weeks. Perry Real Estate is located on Walnut Street, and the two buildings are separated by a parking ramp about 100 feet wide.
Workers used it as a staging area and were apparently loading debris into the bed of the dump truck when the load shifted and began its descent into the Perry building.
“They were working on the building. It wasn’t a problem until then,” Jennings said with a laugh.
Young was the only person in the office. She was stunned and said she had never been part of something like this incident.
“I hope this is the first and last time,” she said. “I was scared because I didn’t know what that was. I just knew it was loud. You hear them all the time here, with what they do, but it wasn’t as loud as it used to be.
About Ernest Booker
Ernest Booker is sports editor of the Vicksburg Post. He has been a member of the Vicksburg Post’s sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-serving reporters in the newspaper’s 140-year history. The New Jersey native is an LSU graduate. In his career, he has received more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and the Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.
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