SAN ANTONIO, Texas – A violent crash early Monday morning tore a car in two, but the driver, somehow, is still in one piece.
San Antonio police say that person suffered “non-life-threatening“ injuries in the crash, which happened around 3:30 a.m. Officers at the scene described the injuries as “cuts and bruises.”
Only one car was involved in the crash, which happened on S. Presa near Panama Street.
Officers said the driver had just crossed a set of railroad tracks in the area before crashing through the backyard fence of a nearby home.
A preliminary police report says the driver told officers a “malfunction” caused him to lose control of the car.
Once the vehicle broke through the fence of the home, it hit a tree and metal pole.
The car then split in two, with parts of it scattering across the backyard.
”On the other side of the tree, there’s debris. Fifty yards! So imagine the impact," Louis Medelez said hours later, upon looking at the crash scene.
He is the owner of Medelez and Sons General Contractors, a company that previously had been hired to do work on the front side of the home.
He said he heard about the crash on the news but was surprised to see the crash scene in person.
“That kind of impact and (the driver) didn’t come out of the vehicle or he wasn’t killed is amazing,” Medelez said. “He needs to be thanking God right now.”
Medelez said the people who were sleeping inside the home also were lucky.
He said had the car not hit the tree in their backyard, they also would have been hurt.
“If it was a smaller, a shrub, the vehicle would’ve been inside the house,” he said.
Outside the home, though, quite a bit of damage was done.
An entire section of a wooden fence was knocked down during the crash. There also was an assortment of debris from the car scattered across the backyard.
Medelez said his company, which originally was making repairs to the front of the home, would also be working to put things back together on the back side of it.
“I’ll probably clean up some of the car parts,” he said. “Maybe get it boarded up temporarily.”