SUV crashes into house, takes out staircase

Having a speeding car crash into the side of a house is bad in any case — but when the car takes out the only staircase leading from your apartment to the ground, well, that's even worse. That's what happened to Rick Jansen this weekend when an SUV hit a pedestrian, then careened into the side of Jansen's building.

Police said they first got a call about the SUV mowing down the pedestrian, who was trying to cross the intersection of the North Loop and Airline Drive, just after midnight Saturday. A few minutes later, they got a report that the same SUV had lost control and plowed into the side of the house at Fulton and Berry. "It was just a ka-woom and [it] shook the building," Jansen told KHOU. "It woke me up, and I jumped. The cat jumped." When Jansen got up to check things out, he found that there was no longer a staircase leading down from his second-floor apartment: "I came to the door and there's this truck about a foot below that, just below the door," he said.

It was quite a wreck, apparently: According to Channel 11, the SUV left skid marks on the side of the house, which fits with Jansen's report that the vehicle was nearly at the top of the stairs. Police arrested the driver, the pedestrian from the Loop and Airline was taken to the hospital and firefighters rescued Jansen from his apartment using a ladder.