An arrest has been made after someone drove a Mercedes through a Los Angeles intersection, resulting in a fiery crash that killed five people, including a child and a pregnant woman, and injured over half a dozen more, according to officials.
The driver, who has not been named, has been charged with vehicular manslaughter and gross negligence, the California Highway Patrol announced according to CBS News Los Angeles. Video of the fatal crash shows a car zooming through a busy intersection, t-boning a black sedan, and starting a raging fire by a nearby gas station.
“It was seeing the kids, that’s what got to me,” Alphonso Ward, a witness to the crash, told CBS News. “The children. They never had a chance. Thinking about that mother who was probably happy to be having a baby. But she’s gone.”
Video of accident at Slauson/La Brea pic.twitter.com/eiRiejQTi5
— Downtown LA Scanner (@DowntownLAScan) August 4, 2022
Eight more people were sent to the hospital with injuries, said the Los Angeles County Fire Department, reports Fox Los Angeles. Law enforcement believe the driver of the Mercedes was speeding at the time of the crash and didn’t hit the brakes.
“All of a sudden a baby literally flew from the middle of the intersection to the middle of the gas station, landed right on the floor in front of me,” Veronica Esquivel, who was at the scene of the crash, told KTLA. “One of the workers came and saw me with the baby and took the baby out of my hands. Somebody tried to resuscitate the baby but the baby was gone.”
Two law enforcement sources reportedly told The Los Angeles Times that they were running bloodwork on the driver to determine whether they were intoxicated or not. The person remains in the hospital, and is reportedly cooperating.
This is a developing story; refresh the page for updates.