Alleged drunken driver knocks porch off LaGrange home

LAGRANGE — A Vermilion man was charged with driving while under the influence after he went airborne over a railroad crossing on Center Road and plowed a house's entire porch into the nearby Grange Hall early Sunday morning. LaGrange police said 23-year-old Michael Aliff Jr. was driving northbound at a high speed when he went over the railroad tracks and lifted off the road. His vehicle sheared a utility pole but continued forward, destroying the porch. Homeowner Julie Carpenter was asleep upstairs when the crash happened, but she said the noise was "the most deafening sound you could ever hear," and she knew what had happened right away. "I sat straight up and I said, 'Oh my God, a car just hit our house,'" she said. The collision had moved the bed six inches from the wall and broken a light bulb in the room. Her husband, James Carpenter, was downstairs in the kitchen getting milk when the crash happened. He ran into their son David's room, where he sleeps with his head facing the exterior wall, to make sure he was OK. Aliff's vehicle passed feet away from the wall but did not hit it. After making sure her family was safe, Julie, a former emergency room nurse, rushed outside to check on the welfare of the driver. "I threw on my boots and ran out in my pajamas, and he was walking right about where the fire hydrant was." She said Aliff didn't "have a scratch on him" but acted intoxicated and wasn't making any sense when he was talking. Only after checking on Aliff did Julie turn around and see the extent of the damage to her home. Large sandstone steps were pushed across the adjacent Glendale Street near the Grange Hall, along with other fragments of the porch. Members of her family recently had decorated the porch as a surprise while she and James were on their honeymoon. Decorations and plants were scattered in the road and the front of the Grange Hall, which sustained minor damage from debris. The extent of structural damage to the house is not known. Police were dispatched to the scene about 1:10 a.m. Aliff was arrested on the scene and transported to Lorain County Jail. He has a court date today in Elyria Municipal Court. Contact Dylan Reynolds at (440) 329-7123 or dreynolds@chroniclet.com.