Cleveland Man Is Going To War With Local Government Because Cars Won't Stop Crashing Into His House Like The Kool-Aid Man

WEWS - At the intersection of South Taylor Road and Fairmount Boulevard in Cleveland Heights sits a house where John Gall calls home. He's owned the property since the late 1990s.

In the past decade, Gall said three cars have crashed into his home.

“Well, the first crash actually took out my pickup truck that was parked in the driveway. I believe that was 2012,” Gall previously told News 5.

The second crash occurred in 2021 when News 5 covered a police chase that ended with a car crashing into Gall's kitchen. Then, in 2022, another crash took out his garage. The latest crash, in 2023, landed on the lawn but narrowly missed the house.

I'm sorry Mr. Gall. I hate to see a fellow John be forced to deal with a terrible inconvenience like this. But I will never not laugh when I see a car burst through the side of a home Kool-Aid Man style. I know how serious the whole thing is. It really shouldn't be a laughing matter. My heartfelt T's & P's go out to John Gall and all the terribly negligent drivers who've crashed through his foyer. But driving a car through a house is so preposterous it doesn't even seem real. It's just so outrageously destructive. Such an unfathomably bad mistake for a driver to make. The images are something out of a cartoon.

You always hear stories of people who purchase homes thinking they got an incredible deal, only to find out later on there's one small thing the seller failed to mention. The basement floods every time it rains more than an inch. The neighborhood skunks hold a meeting on the front doorstep every night. The house is built on an Indian burial ground and once a year you'll have to let a Cherokee tribe perform a sacred ritual in your backyard, and if you don't they'll curse your property. Things of that nature. Must be brutal to find our after purchasing your home that once every 5 years or so someone will park their Nissan Altima in your living room.

The funniest part to me is that at one time, there was a guardrail in front of John's house. But the city decided to remove it. How does a local government come to that conclusion? Was the guardrail too unsightly? Was it needed elsewhere? Is the upkeep of a guardrail simply too much work? For the city to even have a random guardrail on their radar seems ridiculous. At some point they must have held a meeting about John's guardrail and came to the conclusion that it was a significant enough problem for Cleveland Heights that it must be removed. You'd think there would be more important things for a city to deal with than de-guarding John's house. They removed the one thing he wants. His entire life revolves around wanting one single guardrail. Does the city of really think putting one at the intersection of South Taylor and Fairmont is worse than what John has there currently?

Now to be fair to the city, it sounds like John Gall isn't the easiest person to work with. The man has time for a war. I suspect he's enjoying this. If Cleveland Heights Mayor Khalil Seren is to be believed, John Gall isn't the most cooperative person. He's not especially open to compromise. 

Seren stated the city has been in "communication to some degree or another" with Gall and his attorney. He said he even had a conversation with Gall about his concerns before being elected mayor in 2021.

"We here in city government have attempted to work with Mr. Gall in a variety of ways. We've offered a number of solutions. We've offered bollards. We've offered wooden posts. We've offered field stones and concrete barriers. We offered the large boulders that currently sit on his property right now. Subsequent to the placement of those boulders, we've had a couple of incidents where someone ran off the road while driving too fast down Taylor. Those boulders stopped those cars. That's what they were intended to do: to protect the property, to protect him. They were successful," Seren shared.

Another option Seren said the city has offered Gall is purchasing his property.

"We were refused that opportunity to begin that conversation," Seren noted.

Gall has previously told News 5 there's only one solution he'd accept from the city: a guardrail.

However, Cleveland Heights and ODOT report that's not possible.

"The Ohio Department of Transportation guidelines that we adhere to will not allow a guardrail in that location because of the danger to eastbound motorists on Fairmount. There's an impalement risk. There is simply not enough room in that location to provide the impact attenuators that a guardrail would require. Not only that, but a guardrail is not intended to or designed to stop a head-on collision. Period," Seren added.

If the city is really offering John a concrete barrier and he's turning it down because he's stubbornly insistent on a guardrail… come on John. You could meet them halfway. I bet the mayor would love nothing more than to put a guardrail in front of his house and put this whole thing behind him. But there's some annoying ODOT guideline they're forced to abide by that won't allow them to put that specific type of barrier there. So they offered him a concrete one. Which honestly seems like a better solution. Maybe the concrete barrier they're offering him is especially shitty or something. I don't know. I would really like to see what exactly this proposed concrete barrier looked like. But it sounds like there are non-guardrail solutions available. Honestly the rocks there currently look pretty effective. If they added a couple more of them, it seems like his house would be pretty well protected.

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Regardless, I respect a good war with local government. The second you hear John Gall open his mouth, you can tell he's the type of guy who was born to go toe-to-toe with a small town mayor over a property issue. He thrives in this environment. He's made his demands perfectly clear, and if the city isn't willing to meet them, he's going to keep roasting their asses with witty yard signs. He's gonna take interviews with any news station that'll listen. I have a feeling John's got plenty of time on his hands for this.