SUV driver plows into Modesto house — after hitting cars, tree and streetlight

"Another four feet and it could have killed me," Craig Powell said as he looked over the gaping hole in the southeast corner of his Granger Avenue home, left after an SUV plowed into it early Tuesday morning.

Stephen Nelson, 26, was westbound on West Granger Avenue about 2 a.m. when he sideswiped a couple of cars and hit a tree and a streetlight before slamming into Powell's house at the corner of Carlton Avenue. Witnesses reported Nelson was driving well above the speed limit, Modesto Police Department spokeswoman Heather Graves said.

Powell and his wife were watching TV and drowsing in a front room of the house when Powell said he heard a loud "thud" from the adjacent room. "I jumped up and told my wife it sounded like something hit the house," he said.

Heading outside, he said he saw a Ford Expedition upside down in the front yard after it tore into the house. Nelson was half in and half out of the SUV and was unresponsive, Powell said.

After walking to a store, Powell's friend and neighbor Eddie McCullough was heading home along the nearby Virginia Corridor trail when he saw the SUV strike a car parked along the north side of Granger. He then heard the crash into Powell's home and got there just after the homeowner came outside.

McCullough said striking a brick-bordered raised planting bed almost certainly kept the SUV from going farther into the house.

The impact left car parts, floor mats and other debris outside the house. Clothing from inside the SUV lay in the yard and hung from a front gutter. A door panel from inside the vehicle lay on the roof on the backside of the house. Frost stuck papers from inside the SUV to the tile roof.

McCullough and Powell said a number of beer cans were in the yard earlier in the morning. "We believe at this point it might be DUI-related," Graves said Tuesday morning. Nelson, who was taken to a nearby medical center, had not been booked Tuesday morning, and information on his condition was unavailable.

Neither Powell nor his wife were injured. "My wife and I, the dog and the cat, everybody is alive and happy — except the house," he said.

He and McCullough said drivers regularly barrel down Granger and there have been a number of crashes in the area over the years. McCullough pointed to a tree stump in a yard on the south side of Granger, in the 900 block. He recalled that perhaps eight to 10 years ago, a crash took out that tree and killed the driver or passenger of the vehicle involved.

"I've just been waiting for someone to hit right here," said Powell, who owns City Tire Sales. The house struck once belonged to his parents, he said, and he's fortunate that he also owns and lives in the house right across the street. He and his wife can stay there while the damaged house is repaired.

This story was originally published December 12, 2017 at 11:51 AM with the headline "SUV driver plows into Modesto house — after hitting cars, tree and streetlight."