Raleigh bus crashes into vacant home, driver charged with DWI

Raleigh police charged a bus driver with DWI after an activity bus slammed into a vacant home near Person Street and Peace Street on Saturday, July 11, 2026. No one was hurt because the house was empty, but the crash turned a quiet central Raleigh block into a scene of broken curb, twisted metal and shaken neighbors.

Officers found the bus lodged on the property after the wreck. One neighbor said the impact was so jarring it looked like “the bus had ended up on the front porch.” The property owner, Hutzlar, said he is waiting to learn whether his parked truck will be declared a total loss.

Court records show the driver, Kearse, had already faced a DWI charge earlier in 2026 in Cary. Those records list a blood alcohol concentration of 0.23, nearly three times North Carolina’s legal limit of 0.08. That history pushes the crash beyond a single bad night and into a larger concern about repeated impaired driving and whether warning signs were missed before a large vehicle was sent onto Raleigh streets.

The fact that the vehicle was an activity bus makes the questions sharper. North Carolina guidance says drivers of commercial vehicles are subject to stricter alcohol rules, and state impaired-driving rules set 0.08 BAC as the line at which a driver is considered impaired. The crash raises questions about who was on board, what organization was responsible for the bus, and what screening or supervision should have kept Kearse off the road before the vehicle reached a residential corner near downtown.

State penalties are steep. The North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles says a DWI conviction brings at least a one-year license suspension. The North Carolina Judicial Branch says 7,369 DWI convictions were sentenced statewide in fiscal year 2023, a reminder that impaired driving remains a recurring public-safety problem across Wake County and beyond. Police said the Raleigh crash remains under investigation.