They say, “no good deed goes unpunished.” It seems like a Northborough, Massachusetts, man learned just how true that saying can be recently when he crashed his car into his neighbor’s pool while trying to do a good deed, according to Boston 25.
The incident happened on Aug. 17, 2026, when Nick Mascetta was trying to help his neighbors out while they were out of town. However, instead of driving over to their home to drop off some packages, he ended up crashing his Hyundai Elantra into their in-ground pool instead.
Fortunately, the driver was completely unharmed in the incident. Even better yet, he was able to joke about it with reporters when he was later interviewed.
Local ABC News station WCVB 5 says the car has since been removed from the pool, which is probably a relief for Mascetta and his neighbors.
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Mascetta Had Been Collecting Packages While His Neighbor Was Away
According to the driver, he had been tasked with picking up the mail and packages for Jan Brown while she was away on vacation. After she got home, Mascetta hopped into his car to take his collection of parcels over to Brown, driving down her steep driveway on his way to her home.
Except when he went to stop his car at the bottom of the driveway, Mascetta says that his brakes failed, leaving him with a tough decision to make: Should he aim his car for the pool or for the house? Mascetta obviously opted for the softer landing, making a huge splash with his arrival.
“I heard a loud crash, and I thought it was something that fell off the wall,” Brown told the outlet. “That’s not what I was thinking it could’ve been. So I walked the whole house, and came out.”
The Packages Were Mostly Destroyed in the Crash
Mascetta was a good sport about the whole thing, telling WCVB 5 how he put the window down and crawled out of the car once it was submerged. “I’ll get another vehicle,” he joked with a reporter. As for the mail, well, it sounds like that was all lost in the accident, since Mascetta had tossed it all in his trunk before heading to Brown’s house. The only silver lining appears to be the fact that one of the packages contained a box of chlorine tablets that were destined for the water anyway.
As for Mascetta, it sounds like he did everything right once he hit the water. That’s because a 2024 report from NPR says that exiting the car as quickly as possible is preferred. And while electronic devices could be disabled once submerged, exiting through the window could be easier, since car doors could be harder to open when dealing with the force of the water.