GULFPORT, Fla. — A Gulfport homeowner is shaken up and displaced after a car crashed into his home.

What You Need To Know

  • Two Gulfport homeowners are shaken up after a speeding car crashed through their homes over the weekend

  • Gulfport Police say the driver, a 17-year-old, was speeding and lost control; three other people between the ages of 14 and 18 were also in the car

  • The car remains in a neighbor's garage until it can be safely removed

It happened Friday night along Gulfport Boulevard. The car struck the home before doing a 180 degree spin, winding up in a neighbor’s garage.

Gulfport Police say the driver, a 17-year-old, was speeding and lost control. There were three other people in the car between the ages of 14 and 18.

There were two impacts. The car first hit the wall of one home and then went through a neighbor’s garage wall.

“You could tell it was a significant impact. I mean, I could feel it,” Ervin Burke said. 

Just around a bend off of Gulfport Boulevard, Burke’s home is freshly adorned with a blue tarp after a car crashed into one of its walls.

“It came through my driveway, hit the wall and took it out, it did a 180 and ended up in my neighbor’s garage,” Burke said. “It took out both walls.”

Warnings have been posted on Burke’s home, saying the house is unsafe to enter.

“There are cracks going all the way to the roof and, I don’t know if you can see, but there're bricks separated right here,” he said. “I mean, it took it out pretty good.”

It’s a terrifying event that could have had a different outcome.

“This is the main bedroom. Normally it’s the master,” Burke said. “We’ve been sleeping in that forever, but we decided just with noise and stuff that we’d move to the back bedroom. So that’s where we were, thank goodness.”

It was a close call for both Burke and his wife. The two have called the area home for the last 16 years, and not once have they experienced something quite like this.

“This is generally not a problem, but when you’re going as fast as they were, they couldn’t make that turn and couldn’t control the car,” he said.

As debris from the wreckage still sits outside his home, Burke is doing everything he can to get the clean-up started.

“What I’m trying to do now is get a structural engineer out here so they can give enough information to a contractor to be able to come out here and fix this. But, so far, I haven’t been able to get anybody out here, he said.”

As he waits to hear back, Burke says he’s thankful the worst is over.

“It’s real inconvenient but, hey, we’re alive and unhurt,” he said.

Burke says he and his wife are staying at a hotel since their home has been declared unsafe. In the meantime, he is still trying to contact an engineer so they can get started on repairing his home.