CUMMING -- Josephine Jefferson credits a miracle for saving her grandchildren’s’ lives when a car drove through the back wall of her family’s home on Beacon Ridge at about 5 p.m. Saturday afternoon.

Jefferson said the kids, along with their father, had just come to her side of the duplex when the car came crashing in off Hutchinson Road behind Lakeland Plaza on July 23.

“We had a man doing some work, and he’d come over so we could talk about that,” she said. “Thank God the children weren’t in the house.”
The car smashed through the back wall of the house. My son almost left the baby home in the crib, and it ended up underneath the car," said Jefferson.  

“It pushed over the couch and landed on the fireplace,” Jefferson said.

The Forsyth County Fire Department Technical Rescue team responded and used wooden timbers to shore up the back of the structure, which is now missing about a third of the back wall.

“Those men are angels. I didn’t know they did things like this,” said Jefferson as she waved goodbye to the firefighters after they’d finished.

Jefferson said there were young people in the car and that she understood that one may have been teaching the other how to drive, using the quiet cul-de-sac roads inside the subdivision for practice.

According to Deputy Epifanio Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, Melvin Oxlaj, 17, crashed his Toyota Scion at a “high rate of speed.”

His two passengers were reportedly his brothers who were teaching him how to drive.

Oxlaj was charged with reckless driving, failure to maintain lane and driving without a valid license.

He was detained in the Forsyth County Jail and posted a $2,535.50 bond later that day.

One of his brothers, who owned the vehicle, was cited for allowing an unlicensed person to drive.

The American Red Cross responded to assist the family with finding a place to stay while the damage to the home is evaluated.