A family are lucky to be alive after a runaway car ploughed into their lounge – just moments after they left the room.
Dylan Harries’ home is close to collapse after the car left a massive hole in his house and crushed almost everything in his front room while his family were upstairs.
His wife Jody and their two teenage children would usually be enjoying a family movie when the accident happened but had popped upstairs moments before the crash.
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Judy had passed through the hallway just seconds before the Citroen C4 tore through the family home, showering the living room with rubble.
They heard “a bomb exploding” and discovered the driver trying to reverse back out of their crumbling home.
The family rushed outside and watched in horror as the back-seat passenger collapsed out of the car, and a woman sat in the front passenger seat ran off.
Dylan, 31, of Penarth, South Wales, said: “Our whole home is a complete disaster, everything has been ruined and there is rubble everywhere.
“When I think about what could have happened, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
“There is no front wall and he took out the windows too, as well as the TV, the DVDs, the surround sound system, all the ornaments – all destroyed.”
“We don’t have contents insurance so that’s all gone, but also priceless stuff like ornaments the kids had got the wife, and the only framed photograph I have of my late dad – all ruined.
“I’m glad they weren’t hurt and everything, but he has gone back to his home and back to their lives, but we are here suffering.
“Thankfully there was a doctor in the restaurant across the road and she ran over to help the man in the back seat.
“When paramedics arrived he had to be revived in the back of the ambulance twice, but I gather he is find now.”
The crash happened at around 11.45pm on Saturday as the family popped upstairs to admire some DIY which Dylan had just completed in one of the bedrooms.
He said cops breathalised the driver at the scene and then arrested him on suspicion of drink driving.
Dylan said the boot of the car he was driving – which apparently belonged to the female passenger – was full of cans of lager and bottles of wine.
The car was recovered leaving a gaping hole in the front of the rented semi-detatched house, leaving it close to collapse.
But when Dylan called his estate agent – which managed the property – to ask for a new place to stay during repair work, staff told him they had no spare homes.
However, they insisted the family still pay #700 a month rent for the wrecked house which they manage for a private landlord.
Dylan, hairdresser wife Judy, 38, son Sam, 19, and daughter Hannah, 15, are all now staying in Dylan’s mum’s cramped two-bedroom home nearby.
They are having to eat out every night because the kitchen is not big enough, and painter and decorator Dylan can not work because all his kit is in the house.
He said they have been given no information from estate agents Thomas George about when they might be able to return to their home.
Frustrated Dylan added: “My daughter can’t sleep at night, and we are all just devastated, but the estate agents just said they don’t have anywhere for us to use at the moment, and they can’t do anything for us, but we went on their website and there are homes in Cardiff.
“They said we should keep paying rent – they didn’t explain why.
“We are the victims here but nobody seems to care we don’t have anywhere to live, we only have a change of clothes each, and that we don’t know when we might be able to get into our own home.
“Our lives have been ruined.”
Thomas George have not yet replied to a request for comment.
A spokesman from South Wales Police said they were investigating the incident.
* Sean Richard Sweeney, 30, from the Llandough area of Vale of Glamorgan has been charged with failing to provide a specimen for analysis and dangerous driving and will appear before Cardiff Magistrates Court on July 18th.
