{"id":646713,"date":"2026-10-31T08:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/646713\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T08:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:16:11","slug":"halloween-shock-as-driverless-car-hits-henderson-west-auckland-home-while-family-asleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/646713\/","title":{"rendered":"Halloween shock as driverless car hits Henderson, West Auckland home while family asleep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">The mother said when they found the car later this morning, they noticed the handbrake was on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI think that was our luck because otherwise our house could have been damaged more significantly,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">The home\u2019s exterior bricks were damaged in the crash.<\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cWhere the car hit the house, that was the room where my younger child [14] was sleeping. <\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI don\u2019t want to think of what could have happened if that handbrake was not up.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">The mother said the incident was deeply unsettling and not something you would expect, \u201ceven in your worst nightmare\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018A Halloween surprise\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">The family were asleep and blissfully unaware of the crash. <\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cWe did not notice anything. I mean, we heard something, some kind of noise, but we thought \u2018oh maybe the cats did something\u2019,\u201d the mother said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">It was only when she and her husband left the house to go shopping that they made the startling discovery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cWe noticed a car &#8230; I thought well, maybe that\u2019s a Halloween surprise.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"The home of a Henderson family of four was hit by a driverless car overnight.\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>The home of a Henderson family of four was hit by a driverless car overnight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">Police confirmed they received a call about 10am reporting that a vehicle had hit the side of a house in Henderson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">The registered owner of the wrecked car was contacted and told police he had earlier reported the vehicle stolen. <\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\">A police spokesperson said police would make further inquiries into what happened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"VFgYVkWVN\" style=\"display:none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/the-daily-h-your-fast-smart-guide-to-the-days-biggest-headlines\/VQR5CULLQRECZP2ORSWPGDORBU\/?utm_source=nzherald&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_id=nz_cta\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/the-daily-h-your-fast-smart-guide-to-the-days-biggest-headlines\/VQR5CULLQRECZP2ORSWPGDORBU\/?utm_source=nzherald&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_id=nz_cta\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mother said when they found the car later this morning, they noticed the handbrake was on. \u201cI&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[806,33241,51,3944,15979,44867,2109,147537,47129,42,47836,4508,1345,296,101,43,72212,13744,111177,88,1361,2846,8229,40,38,41,39,3807,6123],"class_list":["post-646713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-as","tag-asleep","tag-auckland","tag-car","tag-crashed","tag-driverless","tag-family","tag-frightening","tag-halloween","tag-headlines","tag-henderson","tag-hits","tag-home","tag-into","tag-left","tag-news","tag-shaken","tag-shock","tag-slept","tag-surprise","tag-that","tag-them","tag-they","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-west","tag-while"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}