The front of the Clovis home has been boarded up. The structures uninhabitable for safety reasons after an SUV smashed into the house. Antoinette Ayala heard it coming from half a mile away Thursday night. She said, "I was watching the channel 30 news and I heard a car going way too fast for our neighborhood and I just heard a big crash."
Ayala called 911 after the Nissan Armada slammed into the living room and even knocked a VCR across the room and through a back window. The homeowner was in his bedroom watching TV. He thought a plane hit his house.
Neighbor Keith Mina explained, "It sounded like a loud explosion so I came outside to see what's going on. I saw three kids running from my neighbor's yard."
Mina jumped in his car, drove a few blocks and caught up to a boy who said he was the driver. "The kid told me he had wrecked a car and I told him you could have killed somebody."
Clovis Police arrested the unlicensed 16-year-old boy for DUI and hit and run. They said he took the family car without his parents' permission. Police add his two teen-aged friends were also drunk.
Neighbor Ray Rawn said, "Unfortunately it happened when I was a kid too. It just seems to happen more often nowadays. That's a shame. Hopefully they will get a chance to pay for the damages they created."
The homeowner did not want to talk on camera but appreciated all the neighbors stopping by to check on him. Ayala said, "We all met each other last night and gathered together to make sure everybody was okay."
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