For NBC 6, Andrea Cruz is in Pompano Beach, where police are investigating a shooting at a karaoke bar and a car crash.
Nine people were sleeping inside a home in Pompano Beach when a car came crashing inside. The family tells NBC 6 they were able to run outside just in time to see everything they owned burst into flames.
The incident happened on Northeast 2nd Avenue and 23rd Street.
“Everybody said ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!”
Just moments earlier, six adults and three children had been sleeping inside.
“When I heard the noise and I shook my son and wife and said, ‘Come on, wake up! Something happened!’ I checked the windows and I saw smoke,” said Evens Joseph, whose family has been displaced just two days before Christmas.
Once outside, the family realized a silver Jeep had crashed into their home, setting off the intense flames.
By the time firefighters got it under control, the family had nothing left.
“Everything’s a mess. I lost everything,” said Dully Denis, a homeowner.
When asked if he had anywhere else to go, Denis responded “Nah… I don’t know where I go now. We don’t know.”
The driver of that vehicle was detained at the scene.
Police said they were looking for the suspect of an earlier shooting, when the Jeep sped away and lost control.
It’s not clear if that driver is in fact the man they were chasing, but that incident started at a parking lot outside a karaoke club less than two miles away on Northwest 8th Avenue and West Sample Road.
That’s where a witness heard multiple shots fired and saw a man bleeding on the ground.
“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Jean Paul, a witness.
Two men were taken to the hospital from that scene.
Meanwhile, the Denis family is thankful they weren’t hurt. But now – they are homeless.
The family was planning to spend Christmas in their home. But now, they lost everything inside the home, including the children’s Christmas presents.
