NORTHWEST MIAMI DADE, Fla. – The driver of a stolen car slammed into a home in Northwest Miami Dade Thursday so hard that the house has now been deemed unsafe to live in by city code inspectors.
It all happened Thursday evening while Alberto Navarro was playing with his young daughter in the living room of the home at 2291 NW 95 St., just off Northwest 95th Street and 23rd Avenue.
“You heard the screeching of the noise and then there was the turning and the car flipped over,” Jalisa Canon, who witnessed the crash, said. Then, she said, she saw a man and woman get out of the mangled car and make a run for it.
The woman in the passenger’s side of the car was stopped just a few feet away from the scene of the crash where she was placed on a stretcher and taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Canon said she saw the driver with blood “gushing from his head” and he was trying to jump the gate of the home. “I guess he thought he was going to get far, but they caught him.”
Damage and debris remained in the front yard Friday morning. The barely recognizable Toyota SUV RAV4 has been taken away but tire marks can be seen near the roof of the home.
Miami Dade Police told Local 10 that the SUV was reported stolen. When they located the car, no one was inside. Police waited to see if anyone would return. After two people got into the Toyota RAV 4 and drove off, officers followed them, but eventually lost sight of the car.
When officers arrived on the scene of the crashed vehicle in northwest Miami Dade, it was the Toyota RAV 4 they had been following.
The people living in the home said it sounded like an explosion.
"I opened the door and I was like 'Wow,' what just happened?' " Vicky Santos said.
"All I heard was a crash. Since I was there with my daughter, I thought that they were literally going to hit through it," Navarro said. "When I went outside, it was flipped right next to my car."
The tenants are now staying with family members. Police have not yet released the names of the two suspects. They were both taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center in stable condition.