Three people in an SUV were killed when the vehicle crashed into a parked car, sending both vehicles careening into an Oak Cliff home.
Three people in an SUV were killed Wednesday when the speeding vehicle crashed into a parked car, sending both vehicles careening into the entry way of a multifamily Oak Cliff home.[[303624581,L]]
Dallas police confirmed Wednesday afternoon that the driver of a blue SUV was speeding northbound on S. Waverly Drive when they struck a car parked in front of a home on the 1800 block of W. 10th Street.
The force from the collision carried both vehicles across the front yard and into the home. The SUV came to rest upright on the porch, with part of the vehicle having crashed into the second floor.
Dallas police said there were three adult occupants of the SUV and that there were no survivors.
On Thursday, they were identified as 56-year-old Lucinda Rosas De Esparza, the driver, 66-year-old Evelina Maltos and 93-year-old Paul Maltos, a married couple.
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Driver's Family Struggles to Understand Crash
Ernesto Esparza, who lives just two blocks from the crash scene, told NBC 5 the SUV belonged to his mother Lucinda.
"It's like a dream," Esparza said, about dealing with his mother's death. "My mom told me she loved me before I left to work in the morning, so I can be at peace with that. But I know tonight, and the next couple days is gonna be the hardest thing ever."
Esparza said he recognized his mother's vehicle from television news coverage of the crash and that he soon learned his mother was not home.
Esparza went to the scene of the crash, but said he received no solid information from Dallas police officers on scene.
Soon after, however, Esparza said he returned to the family home and two police detectives showed up asking him to confirm his mother's identity.
Esparza said he does not yet know who was driving his mother's SUV or what could have caused the crash.
"My mom does not drive fast, so it had to be a heart attack. It had to be she blacked out or something [if she was at the wheel]," Esparza said. "But it's just speculation because we don't know."
According to Esparza, he did not recognize the names of the other two people in his mother's vehicle. But he suspects that they are church friends of hers, because she was planning to attend a CPR class at her church on Wednesday.
Home Inspected Following Deadly Crash
Dallas Fire-Rescue said removing the SUV from the home, and ensuring the home was stable, was an extremely difficult process and required a larger contingent of firefighters. Two of the three deceased people were able to be removed from the vehicle while it was upright, but the third could only be removed after the SUV was freed from the home and back on the ground.
A resident of the multifamily residence home at the time of the crash escaped injury, but has since been evacuated due to fuel spilled from the crash seeping into the basement. Additionally, Dallas Code Enforcement is inspecting the home to be sure it isn't in danger of collapsing.
The owner of the building, Michaella Ramler, told NBC 5 she and her husband are eager to get to work and fix the damage.
"We're taking care of our tenants first. We have a place to stay, we have family close. But a lot of our tenants, one of our tenants has a baby. Just making sure they are taken care of, that's the next step," Ramler said.
A GoFundMe account has been established to help one of the tenants in particular – the one who owns the parked car that the SUV crashed into, who also lives in the apartment into which both vehicles crashed.
Witnesses Describe Seeing, Hearing Fatal Crash
Steve Horton, who witnessed the crash from his front porch on Waverly Drive, told NBC 5 that he saw the blue SUV speed up his street and crash into the parked car.
"We saw a blue SUV at a high rate of speed coming down our street Waverly — and just flew through the intersection, hit the white car that was parked there, flew up into the air, pushed the white car into the building. A tremendous explosion. I'm still shook up," Horton said.
Horton ran to the home to try to assist the driver, but he said the driver was killed in the crash. Horton added that the person who lived in the home was uninjured, but very shaken up afterward.
Another nearby resident reported hearing what he described as an explosion when the crash occurred.
"I live down the street on Brighton, and I was laying down — my wife had just left and I was laying down and I heard it. It ricocheted the whole house. I mean it was like an explosion. And I came outside and I had a couple of neighbors who were out looking too, and he didn't know what happened. I called my wife and she was just coming around the corner, she said, 'Oh my God I seen two cars just crash,' and I was like, 'Wow,' so I came over here and I saw this," said Carlos Leja.
NBC 5's Ken Kalthoff, Ben Russell, Holley Ford and Kevin Young contributed to this report.
