Police arrested an intoxicated man in Texas, after discovering the body of a pedestrian in his passenger seat, that they claim he struck with his car.
The suspect, 31-year-old Nestor Joel Lujan Flores, is accused of fatally striking the pedestrian in Dallas on Saturday night and then driving approximately 38 miles to a restaurant parking lot in White Settlement.
Flores told police, “I thought I hit an animal in Dallas and I continued driving till I pulled over in this parking lot.”
Authorities reported that Flores never notified police of this incident after striking something that he claims he could not identify.
Officers were responding to a welfare check when the found Flores. A caller at 11:13 p.m. reported that the driver of a car, later determined to be a Kia Fortes, appeared to be slumped over the steering wheel and the car had extensive damage to the front end, hood, and windshield.
The officer arrived and noticed what appeared to be a human body with no signs of life in the front passenger seat.
The officer immediately had the driver step out of the vehicle and detained him for further investigation. Emergency fire department and medical personnel were called to the scene and determined that the passenger was deceased.
Authorities were initially unsure of where the suspect struck the pedestrian, but they believed he arrived at the restaurant parking lot between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m.
Detectives believe the impact was so severe, that the pedestrian was thrown inside the vehicle and came to rest on the passenger seat.
Flores remains in custody at White Settlement Jail on a pending charge of intoxication manslaughter. In 2021 he was convicted of driving while intoxicated in nearby Collin County.
The White Settlement Police Department said, “We worked overnight with other law enforcement agencies to determine the location of the crash and were notified by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office of a crash on the westbound service road of Interstate 30 near Cockrell Hill Road in Dallas County.”
“According to Dallas County Sheriff’s Office investigators, human remains were located near the roadway that may possibly match the victim’s body that was recovered from inside the vehicle in the restaurant parking lot,” they added. “The Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office will work with the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office to make proper identification of the decedent.”
The pedestrian’s cause of death will also be determined by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The White Settlement Police Department will transition the case to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office for referral and prosecution in Dallas County. Investigators also obtained a blood search warrant.
White Settlement Police Chief Christopher Cook said, “Once we placed Flores in the backseat of our car it smelled like a brewery in there. It’s very unfortunate that he did not realize he had struck a human being, to stop and render aid, and call for help. When you’re impaired to this level where you hit a pedestrian on the roadway and you think it’s an animal, that’s a significant impairment.”
