Homeowner describes being awoken by car crashing into Muskegon Co. home

TWIN LAKE, Mich. — A West Michigan family is trying to find a place to stay after an SUV slammed into their house. 

Melissa Hood woke up around 2 a.m. Tuesday morning to something much louder than her alarm clock. A teenage driver crashed his car into her Muskegon County home in the area of Staple Road and White Lake Drive.

“I heard the bang, I got up looking around my room to see what was going on and [son] comes in my room a few seconds later and says ‘Mom, I think there’s a car in our house.'”

Hood said she works the second shift and got home at 10:30 p.m. She said she had only been asleep for an hour or two when she woke up to a bang.

“We all heard the bang at the same time, but my son was sitting in the living room,” said Hood. “I hurried up and got dressed to go see what was going on, and walked out and got to the front door of the living room and looked out. And there’s a full-on SUV in our house.”

The driver of that SUV was a 19-year-old man traveling northbound on Staple Road. Police said the teen driver didn’t stop at the intersection and instead the vehicle stopped after crashing into Hood’s home.

“At first, I thought there’s no way,” said Hood. “I thought maybe, you know, at the worst case scenario maybe someone came up and, you know, came up in the driveway. But I didn’t think they’d actually be in the house.”

Hood didn’t believe it until she saw it with her own eyes.

“When I actually saw the SUV it’s like, there’s really a car in our house, you know?” said Hood. “It’s still a little hard to kind of believe it’s all real.”

Hood lives with her three adult children. While her two sons Benjamin and Gary were unharmed, surveying the damage with her and calling 911, her daughter Ashley was unaccounted for.

“When the car came in, it came in at such an angle that it blocked her bedroom door so she couldn’t come out, and we couldn’t hear her,” said Hood. “All you could smell these fumes; I would assume it was the exhaust.”

While they used one phone, they had another one trying to call Ashley. Suddenly, they heard a banging noise. Ashley remained trapped in her room as Hood told her to stay put as long as she was okay. When firefighters arrived, they helped Ashley climb out of her back bedroom window.

“She was really scared,” said Hood. “She said that she was pounding and she said she kept on hearing somebody talking to her.”

While Ashley was trapped in the room, she had no idea what was blocking her door, and she assumed the person speaking to her was one of her brothers trying to make sure she was okay.

“She didn’t know until she came outside that there was a vehicle in the house,” said Hood. “So she’s like, ‘What’s going on? Why is my bedroom door stuck?'”

Hood said in response, her daughter just heard “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” and “I’ll take care of everything.” Ashley still assumed it was her brothers until she came outside and learned the truth of what was going on.

Hood and her two boys couldn’t get to the teen driver to see if he was okay as there was debris in the way. She said even when first responders arrived, they struggled to get to the teenage boy and ended up having to break a window to get him out.

Hood and her three children all made it out okay, and the teenage driver was brought to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to authorities.

While Hood is glad they’re all okay, this does leave her family in a tough spot.

“We’re just trying to figure out where we’re going to sleep, you know, where we’re going to put our animals, you know, because at this point you can’t stay in the house,” she said. “And we have to have all of our animals out, too.”

Because of the structural damage, the township marked the house as uninhabitable for the time being. 

With the family displaced and without home insurance, they’re unsure of what to do next.