SAN DIEGO — A 70-year-old driver escaped injury Wednesday after crashing into a medical building near Sharp Memorial Hospital, leaving his car suspended over a stairwell.

It took firefighters about 40 minutes to pull the man out of the Toyota Camry.  He was taken to Sharp hospital for evaluation after the 9:45 a.m. crash, San Diego Fire-Rescue spokesman Maurice Luque said.

The crash left the sedan spanning a stairwell with its back end resting on a walkway and the front left wheel on a ledge on the front of the building. Firefighters estimated the drop to be about 20 feet, Luque said.

Luque said the driver went through the lowered gate arm. The car zoomed into the parking lot, jumped a curb and hit the building. Luque said he had to be traveling very fast for it to have ended up across the divide rather than going nose first into it.

“He was in midair,” Taylor said. “What was scary was he was trying to get out of the car.”