Car's 17-year-old windshield helps stop bullet

A bullet hit the windshield of a woman's car as she was leaving Fair Park in Dallas following Saturday night's fireworks show.

She is thankful that the bullet didn’t take her life.

"All of a sudden, I just hear something go “Boom!” said Yvonne Clarke. “Like that, just like a firecracker."

But it was not a firecracker. 

Clarke and her passenger, a visiting friend, were in traffic leaving the fireworks show when the stray bullet hit the windshield of her ‘98 Lincoln Town Car.  

"We were just talking,” said Clarke. “We were looking forward...we could see that people were still doing fireworks in their yards. But because my friend, he was in the Army, he was in the Air Force, he knows the sounds, and he said all of those were not fireworks.”

It’s clear that illegal celebrating was a problem; Dallas fire inspectors and Dallas police confiscated over half a ton of assorted fireworks.

Clarke has no idea where the bullet came from, but it pierced the glass, shattered it, and then fortunately got hung up on the last film of glass.

Clarke immediately got police officers’ attention and reported what happened. She says some told her the older and thick windshield in her car likely deserves credit for keeping Clarke and her friend safe.

"The police said it was headed right toward my head, and because of that old windshield, along with the old car, is what saved my life,” said Clarke.

Clarke says the windshield on her car is the original one that was on it when she bought the car in the late ‘90s.

She says several years ago, a rock cracked the windshield, and the crack kept spreading. Clarke says she meant to get the windshield replaced but kept putting it off.

She now says she’s happy she didn’t get around to replacing it.