Close Call for Mother, Son

A sleeping 6-year-old boy and his mother emerged unscathed from a hail of brick, glass and burning shards early Friday when a stolen car crashed into their Cypress home, killing the driver.

Neither Jami Shannon nor her son Austin were injured, a blessing the family partly attributes to a prayer picture they hung above the boy’s bed last week.

“It was the luck of the Irish,” said Austin’s father, Mark Shannon, referring to the family’s heritage on St. Patrick’s Day. “It’s a miracle.”

Shortly before 3 a.m., Mark Shannon said he was watching TV in bed at home on Ball Road, a quiet, residential street where the family has lived for 10 years. His wife had fallen asleep in Austin’s room and Mark Shannon was dozing when he heard a boom that he thought was an earthquake.

“The house shook,” Shannon said. “Then I heard an explosion, and saw a bright, white light. Everything went white and then everything in the house went dark.”

Shannon said he hardly had time to put on his pants before he heard his wife yelling “Fire!”

“My wife was taking my son out of the bedroom,” he said. “I could hear the sound of glass breaking under their feet. There was broken glass . . . all over the bedroom, and I saw a wall of fire [outside.]”

The driver, who was burned beyond recognition and could not be identified late Friday, lost control of the car, crashing into a telephone pole with such force that it split in half. A 10-foot section of it landed on the roof.

The car then crashed into the outer wall of the house, hurling pieces of brick into the boy’s bedroom. In a fiery finale, the car nearly split in half as it whipped around a tree and exploded into flames that ignited the telephone pole, the tree and nearby shrubbery.

“It was pretty incredible,” said Cypress Police Lt. Mike Idom, adding that debris from the car was strewn as far as 200 feet from the crash site.

On Friday afternoon, a shaken Mark Shannon examined the glass-strewn bedroom, and the picture mounted on the wall that read: “Lord . . . See me safely through the night.” Shannon marveled again that his family was unharmed.

For the most part, Austin took the incident in stride and went ahead to school and to baseball practice, Shannon said.

“Austin was great . . . until he heard someone say that the driver was burned up inside the car--then he started shaking,” Shannon said. “The only thing [Austin] said was: ‘There goes my football field and ball pen,’ ” referring to the debris-strewn front yard where he plays catch with his dad.

The owner of the 1991 Honda Accord learned of the crash involving his car when investigators arrived at his home in west Orange County on Friday morning. Police said the man had not reported the vehicle stolen.

Idom said Cypress police do not believe the unidentified driver was intoxicated or under the influence of drugs.