VIDEO: SEPTA trolley leaves tracks, hitting multiple cars and historic Philadelphia home
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Videos obtained by CBS News Philadelphia show a SEPTA trolley leaving the tracks and hitting multiple vehicles before slamming into a historic building in Southwest Philadelphia Thursday night.
The crash happened around 10:30 p.m. at Island Avenue and the Cobbs Creek Parkway near the Elmwood trolley depot. In one dashcam video from Mak Towing, the trolley barely misses one car before sideswiping multiple vehicles and hitting the historic Blue Bell Inn.
Surveillance video shows the bus slamming into the building, once a bustling inn in colonial times.
A mechanic on the trolley was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center with injuries that were not life threatening. No passengers were aboard.
Two people in one of the damaged vehicles were injured.
The Inn's caretaker, Delia King, was in the building at the time of the crash, and was on the second floor when the trolley barreled through her home.
She walked downstairs to find the trolley planted in her living room.
"I said 'oh my goodness, there's a trolley in my living room!'" King said. "The whole ceiling is on the floor, no wall or anything, just a big trolley. How did a trolley get in my living room?"
King expects she may have to move due to the damage to her home.
"I'm probably going to lose everything I own because the house is not stable. It took out a whole corner, the whole wall is gone."
King is a painter and her easel was downstairs. Luckily, she was not up for painting on Thursday night.
"If I had not been lazy, I'd probably be dead under a trolley," King said.
Her paintings and easel were damaged from the crash.
"I'm really glad my son was at his dad's house and not here," King added.
A former tavern, the Blue Bell Inn dates back to 1766 and served customers including George Washington. It sat on an important stagecoach route then known as Kings Highway.
According to the Darby Creek Valley Association, the inn was the site of 1777 battle when the British occupied Philadelphia.
Historians say an American raiding party was stationed at the inn when a group of British soldiers marched by. The Americans fired a shot from an upstairs window - from a room that was King's bedroom in 2023.
After the shot was fired, the Redcoats stormed into the building and bayoneted 5 Americans, taking the rest prisoner.
King says the building was cursed by a young British soldier who was killed in the encounter. His last words were "No one will ever leave this accused place," King said.
"He put a curse on my damn house," she said.
Witnesses describe SEPTA trolley crash
A tow truck driver from Mac's Towing whose dashcam captured parts of the incident described it as something out of a movie.
"You got a trolley ghost riding a whip, and it basically just ran down, came down, jumped the track, ran into somebody's truck, and then ran into this historical building right here," he said. "Something straight out of a movie."
SEPTA says it is assessing the damage and will make repairs.
Later Friday morning, the trolley had been removed from the home.
There have been multiple crashes involving SEPTA vehicles in the past week.
On Tuesday night, a SEPTA bus crashed into a building in Center City.
Last week, two SEPTA buses crashed into each other in Rhawnhurst. The crash left one person dead and 13 others injured.
