A speeding tow truck crashed into at least a dozen cars in South Los Angeles. The whole scene was caught on camera. Hours after the incident, the street still looked like it was hit by some missile. Two people were injured in the incident, and the driver was arrested.
The accident took place at around 2:45 a.m. on Friday morning in South Los Angeles. A suspected DUI driver behind the wheel of a tow truck went full speed ahead through the intersection of Griffith Avenue and Washington Boulevard.
The Los Angeles Police Department representatives claim that the truck hit two vehicles, a white Prius and a silver Prius, in the intersection. What followed was a chain reaction. That was the moment the driver lost control of the tow truck, which rolled over and slammed into the cars parked on both sides of the street. Soon after it came to a rest, it burst into fire.
Footage from a surveillance camera captured the moment the heavy-duty truck slides on its roof, hits several cars, and finally comes to a stop before it is engulfed by flames.
At least a dozen of cars sustained serious damage. The driver reportedly told everyone around, rushing to see what had just happened, to keep their distance, because the truck was leaking and might explode.
Footage captured hours after the incident still shows the street full of debris and car wreckage. The vehicles destroyed by the truck were towed away, with some of them having no chance whatsoever to ever get back on the road again. One of the vehicles was pushed into a nearby house, trapping the residents inside.
Nelly Sorio could not go to work in the morning and her son could not go to school. They eventually went out of the apartment through the window. When she called the tow truck company, she found out that the truck driver had been with them for just a month and did not have insurance coverage.
That means that fixing her house is up in the air right now, and so is fixing the cars that would still have a chance to run and drive again.
“We thought it was an earthquake,” said one of the people living in the area for NBCLA. There was also a downed power line in the area, leaving the residents with no electricity for hours.
Authorities arrested the driver on charges of driving under the influence. Preliminary data from the crash scene shows that he had run a red light. The drive who caused the whole chaos in downtown Los Angeles was hospitalized with minor injuries, and so was the driver of the silver Toyota Prius hit in the intersection.
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