Retired postal worker received an unwanted special delivery early on Sunday morning — in the form of a car crashing into his front garden.

Pensioner Jimmy Baxter was asleep in his Coleraine home when his wife woke him at 3am yesterday after she heard a loud bang.

The 73-year-old looked out the window to find dust billowing through their front garden, along with a mangled car which had crashed through two walls and was sitting stationary in his driveway.

“I have a hearing aid so, because I’d taken it out to go to bed, I didn’t hear a thing,” said the father-of-four.

“My wife heard the bang and thought maybe it was the TV but when we looked out we couldn’t believe what had happened.”

It is believed the 21-year-old driver of the car lost control of the vehicle and crashed through the three-foot high side wall |of Mr Baxter’s home before knocking down the front wall and also destroying part of the walls around two neighbours’ houses.

“The masonry flew right up and knocked the two walls down,” said Mr Baxter, who has lived in his Ballycastle Road home for 25 years.

“Let’s just say it’s been a |hectic morning — people were gathered around for a while after, looking to see what was going on.

“I’ll have to get a builder in to fix the walls.

“I haven’t the first notion about building, so I don’t know how much it will cost.”

A police spokeswoman said: “A 21-year-old male has been taken to hospital with injuries that are not believed to be life- threatening after his car left the road and collided into the garden wall of a house on the Ballycastle Road.”