An Auckland family say they are lucky their house did not catch fire after a lit firework was thrown into their home, exploding through a glass door and damaging carpet and walls.
Kellie Smith said she was in bed last night when she heard a group of boys driving around in Waiuku yelling and letting off fireworks around 11.30pm.
When she and her husband woke up this morning, they noticed a firework had smashed through their front door.
“We seem to think that the firework has come through the window and then exploded inside the house because there were marks on the walls,” said Smith.
Smith said a neighbour has reached out to her with CCTV footage which shows a group of boys driving around in a white ute letting off fireworks.
The firework smashed through Kellie Smith's front door and damaged the walls and floor. Photo / Supplied
She said one of the boys had been sitting in the tray of the ute with the fireworks.
“It’s impacting our lives in the sense that there are all these domino effects of someone thinking it was funny,” she said.
Smith was thankful the firework wasn’t thrown anywhere near her 4-year-old son’s bedroom or theirs, saying it could have been a lot worse.
“We were just lucky that our bedroom and our son’s bedroom is on the other side of the house and that it didn’t come through a bedroom window, or a window of an older person ... it could have seriously injured someone or really scared someone to the point where they could have had a heart attack of something, you just don’t know.”
She said her son was now scared that another firework would come through his window.
Smith said following the incident she believed fireworks should not be available to the public, and people like the group who damaged their home were ruining Guy Fawkes.
“It’s a shame that something that we used to enjoy has now become so dangerous,” she said.
Smith said she’ll be reporting the incident to the police now that she has seen CCTV footage.
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