A 26-year-old man is in hospital with critical injuries after the car he was driving plowed into a home in Scarborough early Friday in a dramatic collision that was caught on video.
Emergency responders were called to the home, in the area of Ellesmere and Scarborough Golf Club roads, shortly before 5 a.m.
Toronto police said the man was driving a black 2015 Nissan Sentra northbound on Scarborough Golf Club Road and allegedly failed to stop at signalized lights at the intersection.
He continued northbound, entering a neighbourhood and colliding into a house, police said.
Video from the area obtained by CP24 shows a vehicle travelling toward the home at what appears to be a high rate of speed before crashing into a vehicle parked on the driveway, plowing it forward into the home.
Images from the scene show the car sitting with its trunk ajar amid a pile of debris in the car port area of the house.
The homeowner told CP24 that he was awake at the time, and was confused about where his car was after he heard a loud crash.
“I woke up around about four o’clock and just wanted to have a coffee,” said the homeowner, J.P. Gaur “So I was making a coffee and all of a sudden I heard a bang, then it’s calm, and I opened the door and I didn’t see my car.”
He woke up his wife and told her that he thought it had been stolen.
“Then all of a sudden I came out, and all the glasses pieces (are) everywhere,” he said. “Then I went down and I looked at it. There’s a car halfway (into the car port) and I went closer and I said ‘this is not my car.’”
He eventually found his vehicle in the back yard of his house, on the other side of the smashed car port.
His wife, daughter, son-in-law and grandchild were home at the time as well, but thankfully none of them were injured.
Toronto Paramedic Services said they transported the driver to hospital with serious injuries. However police later said his injuries are life-threatening and that he was undergoing surgery in hospital.
It’s not yet clear what caused the crash, police said.
However J.P.’s daughter, Manju Gaur, told CP24 that this is not the first time that a vehicle has crashed into part of a home on the street, which sits at a perpendicular angle to another street.
“One time, some young people that were drinking, they smashed into a tree, and mostly they injured their own car, but they were okay,” she said.
“Then the next time, a pickup truck, he was very drunk, and he just smashed into the car porch and cracked the porch in half. Then he jumped out of the car and ran away, and our neighbour chased him down. And this is the third time now. This is crazy.”
With files from Beatrice Vaisman