Halloween night wasn't party night for Jason and I. We had a couple friends over and then I decided it was necessary to watch at least one scary movie before retiring for the evening. Jason called it a night halfway through Interview with the Vampire, but I was determined to see the whole thing.
After the movie was over, around 12:40am, I wandered upstairs, got ready for bed and was just about settled in when I heard a tremendous crash. It was loud enough to wake Jason, a normally deep sleeper. I jumped out of bed and ran for the door. I was in my front yard within about 20 seconds and saw a man apologizing profusely to one of my neighbors who kept replying "Sorry's not good enough," a badly mangled Dodge Charger, and another neighbor's Dodge truck that had been thrown across the first neighbor's yard into his Honda. I was stunned. My neighbor quickly called 911 and the driver was on a phone call of his own. There was a woman lurking around the crashed cars for a moment that quickly disappeared. I assumed it was another neighbor who had checked to see what happened and then went home to call 911. I didn't see her again.
Jason came running out after a moment with no shirt or shoes. I finally convinced him to go back and grab shoes and a sweatshirt for me. One of the neighbors had brought out blankets for all of us, but it was still freezing. When Jason emerged from the house he ran directly to the door right across the street (where the owner of the Dodge truck lives) and rang the doorbell. I joined him and he pointed to damage on a PT Cruiser that we hadn't noticed yet. After a moment a young woman came to the door and looked on suspiciously as we explained that there had been an accident involving two of their cars as well as another neighbor's. She confirmed the PT Cruiser was hers and came out to inspect the damage. The driver of the Dodge Ram walked over and asked "I hit that too?" then said "I hit the curb and spun out of control." He had repeated this a few times throughout the night. He pointed toward the stop sign a few yards away, which has a large dip. I assume the dip is what he was talking about. He must have blown right through the stop sign. He seemed like a nice guy though obviously drunk. Jason and the young woman from across the street both smelled alcohol on him.
The police were there within a few minutes, faster than I had expected, and started asking questions. Car after car showed up with more officers. I explained to them what I had seen including the woman who had disappeared. They asked us to fill out witness statements so we all walked inside to sit down and stay warm while writing what we saw. After a moment a sheriff came inside. He started with "As some of you may have guessed by now, the driver was a police officer and he was driving his undercover car. He was off duty." Jason apparently had an inkling, but I was completely surprised.
I was finally able to pry the speed of the driver out of one of the officers. We measured the distance that the truck had been moved; almost 50 feet. The officer said he would have had to be driving at least 50 miles per hour to have pushed it that far. I wonder how fast he was going before he hit the dip by the stop sign and the PT Cruiser, which would likely have slowed him down before coming to the truck.
We finally called it a night around 3:30 am tired and glad we atleast didn't have to be up early the next day. The young woman across the street called a few local news stations and when I got home today there were several business cards taped to my front door. There's even a guy setting up a camera in the street right now. The news programs were the first time I heard the driver's name. My heart goes out to Mr. Salazar's family who must be in terrible pain right now.
Link to the news story J and I did.
http://connect2utah.com/content/video/?cid=60251
A couple pictures I took of the Charger, the truck, and the PT Cruiser. The truck was a lot worse than it looks in the picture.
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