A flying sports car came crashing into a second-floor bedroom – giving an astonished Long Island couple the most dramatic wake-up call of their lives.
It happened just before midnight Monday, when a drunken Louis Tirella, speeding down North Ocean Ave. in Medford in his 1987 Corvette, lost control and careened up an embankment, Suffolk police said.
He instantly became airborne, went flying through a second-floor wall and came to rest just a few feet from the bed of Robert and Kathleen Ilardi, who had been awakened by the sound of screeching tires a few seconds before impact.
But their uninvited guest left quickly – he and his car fell out of the bedroom and to the ground 15 feet below – before anybody could introduce themselves.
Cops said that before Tirella, 56, of Ronkonkoma, turned his car into an aircraft, he veered off the roadway, struck a mailbox, careened back across four lanes of traffic and went up the embankment.
“The car came crashing in,” said Robert.
“It was just an incredible sound of crashing and glass breaking. Pictures were falling, sheet rock was flying, the blinds came down. It was two feet from the bed on my wife’s side.”
He had seen many accidents, but “I’ve never had one in my bedroom before. It blew the corner out of the house and landed on top of a berm” he had built to protect his property.
When they convinced themselves they hadn’t been dreaming, the Ilardis instantly thought of their children. Together they yelled: “Oh my God, the kids!” he said.
They ran and checked on their 12-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son – who were also unharmed.
Their next thought was, “Oh, my God, the house!” said Kathleen.
Debris from the car and the house, as well as oil and coolant, were everywhere, but the gasoline tank did not ignite.
“My house is completely open to the weather,” said Robert, recalling how he walked outside and saw a man “lying there against my house with a Jack Daniel’s bottle, mumbling some baloney about how he had been carjacked.”
“He could have killed somebody,” said Robert. “I’ve raced cars and I can tell you – this guy was flying. This guy doesn’t belong on the road.”