A new video has emerged showing the pick-up truck driver who drove into a group of 20 cyclists in Phoenix, Arizona, leaving two dead and 11 injured, sobbing on the phone with his partner, while call records have also showed that he didn’t dial 911 after the crash. Meanwhile, a cyclist who survived the crash has claimed that the attorney’s office has failed them while also accusing the driver of using Snapchat on his phone.
The crash took place on 25 February 2023 on the Cotton Lane bridge in Goodyear, a large suburb to the west of Phoenix, Arizona’s capital. After the incident, Goodyear Police Department confirmed that a female cyclist was pronounced dead at the scene, while a man, who was also part of the group ride, died shortly after at a local hospital. Eleven other cyclists were also transported to three different hospitals with “various injuries”.
Now, ABC15 has obtained a video of the driver Pedro Quintana-Lujan moments after the collision, in which he can be seen sobbing and saying: “Babe, I’m scared, babe. I hit a lot of people, babe.”
He then turns the camera around to show the scene on the bridge where cyclists are lying with their damaged bikes strewn all across the road. Quintana-Lujan adds: “Babe, I killed somebody, babe.”
> Pick-up truck driver crashes into group of cyclists, leaving two dead and 11 injured
Records from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation showed that he called his father on his cell phone and then his wife over Snapchat right after the crash. There was no record of a call to 911, the emergency telephone number in the USA. Out of the four calls received by 911 at that moment, three were from the victims and one from a bystander.
Arizona pick-up truck driver after crashing into 20 cyclists (credit: ABC15/YouTube)
One of the cyclists involved in the crash was Clay Wells, an experienced cyclist who was the most severely injured out of everyone and spent more than 80 days at the medical facility. ABC15 asked Wells if he felt the system had failed him, with Quintana-Lujan yet to make his first appearance in court.
He said: “I feel like the County Attorney’s office failed us. If you read the NTSB report, I don’t understand how there is any way possible you could not argue, at least to a presiding judge, to go forward that you couldn’t prove recklessness, especially those video links… of him getting on his phone, Snapchatting.”
In November, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell told the victims that she would not pursue felony charges, saying there was not enough evidence. Quintana-Lujan had been released from jail days after the crash from lack of evidence.
Mitchell said: “[The evidence] just wasn’t there. It’s heartbreaking and it's unsatisfactory but it is where we are at right now. It’s a collision where we cannot show with the evidence that there was a conscious disregard of a risk that this individual made.”
Arizona pick-up truck crash (image credit: ABC15/YouTube)
The NTSB report, released in February this year, also revealed that that Quintana-Lujan had drank alcohol and smoked marijuana the night before the incident. Authorities said that he did have a small amount of THC in his system but pointed out that Arizona law doesn’t set a standard for proving impairment by THC only.
After the crash, he told police officers that his steering wheel had locked, however the NTSB report claimed that two two separate investigators checked his truck and found no issues.
The case was sent back to the Goodyear Prosecutor’s Office where 11 misdemeanour charges were filed in March. If found guilty, he could face a minimum fine of $1,000 and a maximum could include up to six months in jail, years of probation and more fines. As of now, he is scheduled to appear in court on 26 June.
> Shocking footage of Florida collision shows moment group ride hit by driver of SUV
Wells said that he still struggles to go over the Cotton Bridge now. “Last Saturday, as I rode by the ghost bike, I just said a little prayer,” his voice breaking. “It’ll get better with time, I know there are still people who can’t ride over the bridge.”
In May last year, Wells, recovering from his injuries at the time, told ABC15: “I was scared to death. I woke up, both feet were three to four times the normal size swollen and I couldn't move, and I didn’t have any recollection of the accident.
He went through five surgeries for 12 different injuries which included a shattered pelvis, punctured bladder, broken collar bone, and fractured ribs all on the left side of his body. He also was in a medically-induced coma for nearly two weeks.
He said: “The other thing I really struggle with is, why me? Why was I picked, chosen to survive, and others weren’t?”
In December 2023, Illinois Supreme Court declared that cyclists were "only permitted users of the road, not intended", sending many cyclists in America into a state of shock and disbelief, who blasted the decision as “asinine” and “backwards”.
A year ago, near Flagstaff, Arizona, a campervan driver ploughed into a group of cyclists in a shockingly violent collision, injuring seven and hospitalising four, He received a $500 fine for “failing to give cyclists enough room while passing”, as one victim questioned whether the crash was, in fact, an “accident” and called on “pissed-off motorists” to see the “human element” of cyclists on the road.
Earlier this year, a shocking footage obtained by road.cc showed a 77-year-old driver of an SUV on the wrong side of the road in Florida“well-above the speed limit” and disoriented for “unknown reasons” going head-on into a group of eight cyclists.
Seven of the riders were rushed to two hospitals, with two of them in critical condition. The injured also included a husband and a wife, with the husband falling into a coma.
Following the crash, cyclists from Florida made an emotional plea for urgent measures to improve road safety. One of the riders involved, Cameron Oster, said: “There's no bike lane. There's no shoulder. There's not even unpaved run-off. So if you ride your bike within six inches of the white line on the shoulder of the road, your arm will actually hit branches that are hanging over that white shoulder line.”
Another member of the FSRC, Richard Gertler, said he had been hit before and called on the campaign to “humanise” cyclists because “all too often a driver will start yelling" as “we're not people to them [...] just an obstacle”.
“Come pedal in our shoes for a day and see what we experience,” he said. “We're people. We're somebody's mother, father, son, daughter.”