A Palm Beach woman took her Rolls-Royce on a wild ride last Friday evening and did some serious damage.
Somehow she drove through a mansion’s yard, knocked over a $3 million sculpture, through a landscape fence and seawall, and ended up on the beach. (More on the damaged sculpture below…)
Video footage shows the driver entering the property eastbound from the driveway on Canterbury Lane making contact with the curb on the north side of the driveway. The vehicle then came to a stop.
She then starting driving east again striking the sculpture, traveling through a hedge, into the seawall railing and onto the beach, police said.
The Palm Beach Post reports that the 66-year-old motorist –who was not identified (Melania?)– told police she had “no memory” of the hours before she was found in her Rolls dangling off the the 6-foot seawall on Friday evening around 6PM.
Authorities said she did not appear intoxicated and was not seriously injured.
OMG, I have so many questions!
I google mapped Canterbury Lane (see below) and the street dead ends at the beach. All of the multi-million dollar houses in the neighborhood have very high hedges and most have security gates.
It says she entered the driveway and she couldn’t have been going too fast, as these are small streets that are traveled almost exclusively by residents, their invited guests, house workers, delivery people and security guards.
Once she plowed through the yard, why didn’t she stop there?
The car came to a full stop according to the report and then started up again (to escape?!) and then hit the $3 million coral sculpture.
The “coral” description with the $3 million price tag made me think of Damien Hirst‘s Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable series (ironic title!) and sure enough, it looks like it was his Sphinx! More on that exhibit on my personal blog from 2017 here, which briefly tells the fascinating story of the series. Btw, there’s a Netflix documentary on it as well.
Anyway, multi-million lawn art aside, where was this woman going? If she hadn’t been drinking (personally, I suspect white wine) then was she on prescription meds? Sleep driving on Ambient? At 6PM?
Update: Still don’t know who the woman was, although apparently the Rolls she was driving costs around $350,000. The sculpture’s owners are Steven and Lisa Tanabaum, who are prominent Palm Beach art collectors. The $3 million Hirst sculpture was sitting on the lawn of their $50 million beach front estate.
(Photos, Palm Beach Police Dept., Google maps; via Palm Beach Post)
