A loud crash sent residents of Stoddard and Frye streets running into the road just after midnight Tuesday.

The driver of a silver Ford Explorer had failed to stop at the intersection shortly before plowing over the lawn, bouncing off a tree and coming to rest under the living-room window of a duplex at 1224 Frye St.

No serious injuries resulted from the accident, though the driver sustained a broken nose. He was transported to Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital for treatment. The vehicle’s lone passenger was not injured.

“The guy went straight through the stop sign, hit the tree, bounced off and stopped up against the house,” East Lansing police Sgt. Jeff Murphy said.

Murphy said it appeared alcohol was involved in the incident that nearly totaled the vehicle, and witnesses confirmed it.

“They were both pretty wasted,” Charles McHugh said of the male driver and his passenger. “The driver came out of the car stumbling. His nose was bleeding.”

Police would not comment on the driver’s level of intoxication.

McHugh, an English senior, was sitting on the porch of his home when he and his roommates saw the crash and called 911.

Tom Lausman said he watched the driver racing southbound on Stoddard Street and never seem to pause at the stop sign.

“We heard screeching so at some point he must have tried to stop,” the computer science junior said, describing the noise as a “vroom-screech-slam sound.”

“We thought he killed the house,” Lausman said. “But apparently the tree took the brunt of it.”

The person living in the half of the duplex struck by the car wasn’t home when the vehicle landed on his doorstep. Interdisciplinary studies in social science senior Daren McNay lives in the other half and was sitting in his basement when he heard the crash.

“All the pots and pans came off and fell on the counter and I came running upstairs,” McNay said.

“There’s not that much damage to the house at all. There is some structural damage to the siding.”

McNay said the driver claimed mechanical failure.

“He said that his brakes went out, but I think he was speeding and drunk,” he said.