Hours after a car ran into a house on High Street in Westbrook Friday, neighbors were still outside of their homes looking at the accident scene in disbelief.

“Anyone see my fence?” Tim Delaney, who lives in an apartment building on the corner of Brown and Myrtle streets, asked his neighbors.

“It’s buried in my lawn,” answered Kim Marquis, who lives in the house on High Street that the car charged through.

At around 1:30 p.m. Friday, Thomas Murphy, 76, was driving down Myrtle Street, where he lives, when his car hit a curb and went airborne, hitting a fence and a tree before crashing into the house at 76 High St., according to eyewitness Jeremy McGowan.

“It was quick but it was pretty dramatic,” said McGowan who lives upstairs from Delaney and watched the accident unfold from his deck. McGowan said the car was traveling at about 70 miles an hour down Myrtle Street when it hit the curb.

“I could see him just jet, hit that tree and cut it in half,” he said. “He was probably a good 2 feet in the air when he hit the tree, then hit the house.”

According to Westbrook Police Capt. Tom Roth, a medical episode – though he didn’t know what kind – caused Murphy to lose control of his vehicle. As of Tuesday morning, Murphy was still at Maine Medical Center.

At the time of the accident, no one was home at Marquis’ house, where she lives with her partner Dina Gooding and their son Cameron, who Marquis said was not going to be pleased when he saw the state of his sandbox.

For Marquis, however, neither the crushed sandbox – nor her demolished living room – was her biggest concern.

“My son could have been dead,” she said.

Both Marquis and Gooding were working at the time of the accident, but their friends across the street heard the whole thing.

“It was like the worst thunderstorm you could ever hear,” said neighbor Jeanie Devoe, who was the first to call the police.

Devoe said Murphy “was bleeding quite a bit” when she came outside, but was talking and moving.

Those at the scene said, considering the look of the car, they were surprised he was alive.

“I’m sitting here looking at it, and I can’t believe it,” Gooding said.

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