ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Carrie McClung was asleep Wednesday night when the sound of sirens pierced the quiet of her Starnes Cove neighborhood.
“I heard sirens and looked out the window,” said McClung, who lives across the street from the house where the chase ended.
She keeps an office upstairs in the home, while a tenant lives in the basement apartment.
“At first, I thought it was EMS — they sometimes come to check on my tenant,” McClung said. “But then I saw police running toward the house with someone in custody, and I thought, ‘What is going on?’ I got dressed and looked again — that’s when I saw flames. I realized, ‘Wow, my house might be on fire.’”
Within minutes, flashing blue lights filled the road. Then came the glow of orange flames licking up from her deck.
“It hit me that my house might actually be on fire,” McClung said. “So I threw on clothes and went outside.”
What she found was the aftermath of a chaotic chase that began in Haywood County and ended with a fiery crash at her home on the outskirts of Asheville. Authorities say the driver, Devan Michael, of Winston-Salem, had fled from law enforcement before slamming into McClung’s deck just after 10:30 p.m.
The impact splintered wood, toppled a main support post and sparked a fire.
“It’s a miracle the whole house didn’t go up,” McClung said.
No injuries were reported, she said.
Investigators later discovered what they described as a large quantity of drugs inside the burned-out car — several ounces of fentanyl, enough to kill tens of thousands of people, McClung said authorities on scene told her.
McClung, who owns John McClung Roofing with her husband, said the house sustained only minor fire damage, though the crash destroyed part of the deck. “They had to shore up the corner before they left,” she said. “It’s amazing it wasn’t worse.”
Security camera footage from her property shows the suspect’s vehicle barreling down the street at high speed and crashing into the deck without ever slowing down. “He never even hit the brakes,” McClung said. “It’s unbelievable.”
The chase involved multiple agencies, including the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office, North Carolina Highway Patrol, and, according to McClung, agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
By dawn, the flames were out, the wrecked car had been towed, and McClung’s neighborhood was quiet again.
Efforts to get comments from the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office and Haywood County Sheriff’s Office have been unsuccessful.
