Terrifying home security footage shows a woman narrowly escaping a massive boulder that crashed through the walls of her new home over the weekend.
Honolulu’s Caroline Sasaki told the local NBC affiliate “Hawaii News Now” that the incident happened just before midnight as she was walking towards the couch in her living room to watch TV. (Different outlets have described the event differently as Saturday and Sunday night.)
Authorities told Hawaii News Now that the boulder, which is 5 feet high and 5 feet wide, scraped a family car before crashing through the cinder block wall of Sasaki’s home. It then crashed through the living room and another wall before coming to rest in a bedroom.
Luckily, none of the four people who were inside the house were hurt – although Sasaki told ABC’s KITTV 4 that she was told that if she “had gone one step further, I probably wouldn’t be here”.
“I heard the loud bang and apparently the boulder passed right in front of me, which I didn’t know,” Sasaki told Hawaii News Now. “I did not see it. All I heard was the bang and then someone asked me if I was okay.”
Sasaki was still shaken up by the incident when she spoke to Honolulu news station KABC.
“Basically, I’m in shock,” Sasaki told KABC. “I refuse to watch the videos, so I’m — I’m not sure how close — but everyone is telling me I’m lucky.”
The Sasaki family told local news station KHON that they had moved into the newly built home in Honolulu’s Palolo Valley earlier this month.
Sasaki told KHON she grew up in the Palolo Valley and big rocks don’t often roll down hills — even during “heavy rain and hurricane warnings.”
She told KITV that she and her neighbors suspect the rock came down due to excavation work for a proposed development on a mountain near her property.
“I was scared of that happening from the start,” Sasaki told KITTV.
KHON spoke to the development’s owner, Bingning Li, who insisted his project was not at fault.
“Not at all, that’s from way up, I was looking at one of these rocks about 50 feet from the top of the property and landed over there and then came down here,” Li told KHON. “So it hit one of the cables it was supposed to stop and the cable snapped. That took a lot of energy, otherwise this damage would have been much greater.”
Hawaii News Now reports that the incident is still under investigation by authorities. The outlet said the boulder was still at Sasaki’s home as of Monday.