No one was injured, but the car was completely charred, a sprinkler head was knocked over and brush at both the homes of the car owner and one of his neighbors were scorched, according to witnesses.

The owner of the 1990 Mazda Protégé, 17-year-old Justin Edwards, was not in the car when the incident occurred, he said. Instead, Edwards said he was in his backyard around 4:15 p.m. when a neighbor ran into his home to warn him that his car, parked along Bacigalupi Drive, was on fire.

Edwards ran out in time to see flames over 7 feet high consume his car and watched as it slowly made its way down the street at a "walking pace" of 2 to 3 miles per hour. According to Edwards, the parking brake was on, but the fire must have melted the brake pad.

"It was my first car," Edwards said. "It's a pretty big bummer."

Just one day before, Edwards had been involved in a fender bender accident, which he speculates caused something to go wrong with the car.

Witnesses agree it's fortunate the incident did not end more tragically.

"The car was blazing. The tree above it was burning," said Barbara Laird, Edwards' next-door neighbor.

"That car was polluting. I never knew a car smelled that bad," said resident April Maiten.

Jonathan Carter, Edwards' stepfather, said a neighbor told him that someone who had parked near the corner of Bacigalupi and Belvue managed to climb inside their vehicle and move it before Edwards' car reached it.

Carter said the family will have the car towed this week to a junkyard and that he will call an arborist to examine the singed tree in front of the home. As Edwards is scheduled to join the Navy in a couple months, there are no plans to buy a new car.

"It was kind of a beater car—you know how your first car is. But we weren't hoping it would burst into flames," Carter said.

Last week's event marked the second accident to have taken place at the corner of Bacigalupi and Belvue in recent months.

In early September, a teenager driving a 1997 Porsche was charged with drunken driving after hitting a tree on that street corner. In that instance, the 18-year-old driver took off on foot, but was caught by police and taken to jail, according to a police report.