LAWRENCE - Roz Coelho was counting her blessings last night that she and other family members decided to forgo a routine of sitting in the front porch of their Irene Street apartment.
"Every day, that porch is packed with people," Coelho said as she inspected the wreckage left by an SUV that backed out of a driveway across the street and crashed into the area where they normally gather.
"We're always out on the porch... Can you believe it? The one night we're not out there and this happens. That's God looking out for us," she said.
Coelho and other witnesses were convinced that about a dozen people would have been on the porch at 22-24 Irene St. shortly before 7 p.m. when the dark-colored SUV came barrelling backwards into the screened-in area about 7 feet above the sidewalk.
Instead, Coelho and others were hanging out on outside steps at the side of the house.
The driver, Margarita Burgos, 37, who lives across the street, was attempting to back out of her driveway, and never took her foot off the gas pedal, police said.
Instead of stopping in the street and turning her car forward, the vehicle scaled a 3-foot high stone garden wall and backed another 4 feet upward directly into the porch.
As Coelho, her relatives and friends screamed for the driver to stop, her 2-year-old niece came within 6 feet of getting hit, she said.
"When I got in the car, I pressed the gas by mistake," Burgos said.
"I've never had any problem before driving. My license (rating) is the best in Massachusetts. I feel really bad," she said.
Police Lt. James Raso said he couldn't recall seeing an accident so bizarre in his dozen years on the Lawrence police force.
"It looked like a movie scene out of universal studios," Raso said.
"The all-wheel drive just kicked when she kept backing up with her foot on the gas. Instead of just smashing into the wall, it climbed up into the porch. Luckily, nobody was there," he said.
A preliminary check of police and state Registry of Motor Vehicles records determined that Burgos was a good driver, insured with no prior problems, according to Raso.
Police continued their investigation last night. It was not clear whether Burgos would be cited for any violations.
Agnes Kinyanjui, who owns the two-story wooden frame building, called it "a nightmare that nobody would believe."
"My tenant called me and said a car is in the porch. I hung up and called her back to ask her what she was talking about," Kinyanjui said, as she looked at the remains of what earlier was a garden bed with yellow roses.
"They say we can't use the upstairs porch because it's unsafe right now. But it could have been a lot worse. A little girl almost got hit. There were kids playing in front of the house," Kinyanjui said.
Coelho said things happened so fast there was hardly time to react.
"We kept wondering, 'Why is she backing up so fast?' She just flew. When the car hit the sidewalk, she kept on the gas and kept climbing up into the porch," Coelho said.
"It seemed she never took her foot off the gas. We had to turn the car off. We were afraid it was going to blow up," she said.
Elvis Tores, a next-door neighbor, came running across the street to help Burgos out of the car.
"She was scared and didn't want to get out at first," Tores said.
"The car was so high in the air, she need help to get down, It's something you would never expect to see, It seemed like it attracted hundreds of people," he said.
The vehicle was lifted out of the porch by a special crane from Coady's Towing.
