Police identify driver killed in crash that left car's engine in 2nd floor of home

Oct 03, 2023

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Officials have identified a man who died this weekend in a wild crash after he allegedly fled police in Belchertown.

Massachusetts State Police troopers tried to stop a car at 8:45 p.m. on Route 202, but the vehicle sped away, police said. The vehicle was being operated erratically and failed to stay within marked lanes, according to state police spokesman David Procopio.

The driver, identified as Miles Murray, 19, of Henniker, New Hampshire, ran a red light at the intersection with Route 9 and crashed into a mulch bed and the car became airborne, police said.

The vehicle hit a rock wall, a large tree, and a light post before striking the front end of a Jeep Wrangler that was parked in the driveway of a house at 79 North Main St.

The car’s engine block was "launched out of the engine compartment," and it crashed through a home at 73 North Main St. and landed in its second floor, police said.

"The engine's still upstairs," homeowner Donna Sims said Monday afternoon. "They've got to get it out."

The front end of the vehicle struck the exterior of the house on the first floor, leaving gaping holes on two levels of the building.

Sims said her mother left the first-floor room the vehicle crashed into just minutes before the collision.

"She was just looking at the hole in the wall, staring in disbelief," Sims said of her mother.

Murray was ejected from the car and pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

It remains under investigation whether the driver was impaired, but troopers found "multiple empty beer cans inside and outside the crashed vehicle, as well as a fake Vermont driver’s license" with the man's photo on it, Procopio said.

Sims said her home has been condemned and that she and her family are going to "just play it day by day."

"I'm hopeful, maybe, we can go in and get a little bit of our stuff. Salvage a little bit of our stuff," she said. "Bricks have been falling. Now, [the structural damage is] from, I guess, the roof all the way to the basement."

Sims said the Red Cross of Massachusetts has provided her and her family with a place to stay for the next few days.