Several Lemon Grove neighbors stood outside their neighborhood early Saturday morning, as a car crash caused multiple parked cars to go up in flames. The crash happened near the corner of Mount Vernon Street and Skyline Drive.
“When I come outside there’s a huge pillar of fire. So I immediately go to my next-door neighbor right here and I tell them to get out then I come back, and I get my family out,” Stephen Perkins, who lives in the neighborhood, said.
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WATCH HEREThe driver of a Nissan Altima hit a parked car, causing it to rear-end the parked cars in front of it, according to Perkins. The flames grew increasingly intense until firefighters were able to put it out.
“When the police officers got here, they immediately checked to see if there was anyone else in the car. The windows were blown, and stuff was still popping and a lot of explosions going on and then it burned down the power line that goes across the street and then the power line fell and started sparking across the street,” Perkins said.
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SIGN UP Another neighbor, Miguel, helped the driver escape the blaze. “We were just coming back from the liquor store, and we heard a loud crash, and a car went up in flames and [I] seen a gang of people around the car and then I heard a banging in the backseat, so I grabbed a rock. Somebody helped me get some rocks and I broke the back window, and I helped the guy come out of the backseat,” Miguel said.
People in the surrounding community weren’t injured, but the incident has some neighbors concerned about safety on the street, according to multiple eyewitnesses.
“It’s just one of those things where it has happened multiple times and we’ve talked about we’ve gotta move,” Perkins said.
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NBC 7 reached out to San Diego County Sheriff’s Department for an official cause of the car crash but they did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
