SPRING HILL, Fla. — A medical emergency caused a Spring Hill man to drive into a home on Irondale Avenue Tuesday morning, according to Florida Highway Patrol.

  • Domingo Rivera, 86, died at hospital
  • No one at home at time of crash
  • Family living at home in process of moving out
  • More Hernando County stories

The driver, Domingo Rivera, 86, was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

“My buddy. Nice man. Great neighbor,” said resident Brian D. said, speaking about Rivera.

Brian said he was working on his car and saw Rivera, his Elston Street neighbor, drive by.

“About maybe a minute later, I heard, ‘boom,’” Brian said. “I looked down here, and there was a car ran into the house.”

Brian said he got in his car and drove to the scene.

“I tried getting in the front and I couldn’t, so I ran around back," he explained. "There was a sliding glass door. I got in there. At that point, I called 911 and I got in the garage, where he was, and tried opening the door.”

Brian said a dispatcher told him to try to keep Rivera conscious until help arrived.

Home residents not there, but could have been

No one was in the home at the time of the crash, but Marlyne Castano said that almost wasn’t the case.

“I was supposed to be here at, like, 9:30 this morning. This is where he was going to be,” said Castano, gesturing to her three-year-old son, Elias.

Castano said she and her family rented the home. They were in the process of moving out, and she was planning on stopping by Tuesday to clean.

She said she dropped off her ten-month-old child with a friend beforehand and got held up.

“We were talking and, you know, I got held back in the house,” she said. “I was stressing. I’m like, ‘Man, I stayed there forever. I left the house so late. I was supposed to spend my morning cleaning, and I’m so behind.’”

The bedroom the car crashed into used to belong to Castano’s five-year-old daughter. Castano said it was the only room that still had furniture in it.

It was meant to be a room her children could play in while she cleaned.

“To come to just realize that he could’ve been in there when that happened, because this just happened a couple hours ago. Really, just – God was so faithful,” said Castano. “He’s always so faithful.”