Stolen SUV slams into Durham home, sends traffic sign flying into second-floor bedroom

John Bray and his wife, Marissa Minnick, were awakened at about 3:30 a.m. Saturday by the crash, which they said sounded different from those they usually hear in their neighborhood.

"We’ve lived here for about three years, and we knew it was a weird intersection when we moved in. But we never could have imagined the extent of the accidents and the chaos that occurs at this intersection," Bray said of the North Roxboro Street and Markham Avenue intersection where they live. "Daily, there are screeching brakes, horns honking."

When they scrambled downstairs to see what happened, they found the front end of an SUV under their front porch and a path of wreckage across their front yard.

The SUV, which police told the couple had been stolen a half-hour earlier from a downtown Durham apartment complex, snapped a tree in half, took out part of their fence, demolished some raised garden beds and sideswiped their car. It hit the porch with such velocity that it knocked out a brick support column and left a crack in the home's foundation on the back side of the house.

"It just felt so much more personal than we could have imagined, to wake up in that way and see everything we’ve built together just crumbled like that," Minnick said.

A nearby property owner showed the couple footage from a security camera that shows the SUV zooming down the street, and someone – likely the driver – running away on Roxboro Street moments later.

As they surveyed the damage, Bray and Minnick noticed a traffic sign hanging from the second story of their home. It was only when they went back inside that they realized how close the sign came to injuring them as they slept.

The sign's metal post crashed through the siding into a bathroom and then through an interior wall into their bedroom, ending up near their bed.

"There were splinters of drywall, and it hit multiple studs in the wall. Those were splintered and sprayed across the bedroom," Minnick said.

"We were very fortunate to not have been injured from this, "Bray said. "A good foot of this road sign was sticking into our bedroom."

Despite dozens of crashes, no improvements planned at crash-prone Durham intersections

"The neighborhood, in general, has been very vocal about this being a dangerous intersection," he said, reciting a litany of crashes in the area since he and his wife have lived there.

"It’s no secret that it’s a dangerous intersection, and ultimately, I think it comes up to the city to tell the DOT, 'No, this has to happen. This has to change,'" he said.

Sean Egan, Durham's transportation director, said the city installed a concrete median at the intersection three years ago to slow traffic and improve safety.

"Additional crashes, such as the most recent one, however, indicate that more comprehensive changes are needed," Egan said in an email to WRAL News.

Although the City Council adopted a report a year ago to make changes to the intersection in response to residents' concerns, he said, the DOT rejected the proposal. City officials are citing the crash into Bray's and Minnick's home as they negotiate with DOT engineers to identify safety improvements that can be done, he said.