BUCKEYE, AZ — A car ripped through a cinder block wall and a building at Cholla Ranch Apartments on Labor Day, according to Buckeye police.
Officers had Miller Road closed between Baseline Road and Maricopa Road for a majority of the day as detectives worked to determine how and why a man drove through the complex in the middle of the day.
Police say no residents were seriously injured from the crash, but one of several children in the damaged apartment suffered cuts from broken glass.
Multiple people in the building tell ABC15 they heard and felt the impact.
Ellen Liles, who lives on the second floor, said, "The whole house shook."
A resident down the hall from her, Daymien Llamas, said, "I thought that it was just someone dropping something heavy from above that they were trying to get up there or bring down. I went to go look and all I saw was smoke."
The 37-year-old man driving the car allegedly fled the scene but was later detained.
A female passenger was treated for minor injuries, and residents say they sprang into action to help.
Llamas said he and his father tried to get the woman into the shade right away.
"There was a water boiler knocked over, so it was pouring all kinds of boiling hot water that we didn’t even know of, so my dad and her got their feet burnt from the water," the resident shared.
According to police documents, the crash occurred after the occupants of the car got into a verbal argument.
Evidence shows the vehicle was going upwards of 100 miles per hour on Miller Road when the driver "thought about running the vehicle into a pickup truck," police say, "but at the last moment swerved to miss the truck." Instead, the vehicle left the roadway and crashed into the apartment complex.
Documents show the driver, who has a suspended driver's license due to previous DUIs, admitted to smoking meth before operating the vehicle.
The driver was booked into jail on numerous charges including aggravated assault, endangerment, kidnapping, leaving the scene of a crash, criminal damage, DUI, and more.
