ST. GEORGE — After responding to a two-vehicle collision on Red Hills Parkway on Thursday evening, police arrested one driver for suspected DUI. Both vehicles were initially found unoccupied.
Shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday, officers and emergency personnel responded to East Red Hills Parkway near the intersection of East Middleton Drive on a crash involving a charcoal-gray Dodge Ram pickup truck and a silver Toyota Sienna minivan, according to charging documents filed with the courts.
Police say they arrived to find both vehicles unoccupied and heavily damaged, with the minivan partially blocking traffic in the westbound lane.
Nearby, officers found two occupants from the pickup truck, including the driver, 37-year-old Jaime Cruz-Jimenez, who said he didn’t speak English. His friend was called to the scene to assist with translation. Jimenez provided officers with an identification card issued out of Mexico and told police he did not have a driver’s license, the report states.
St. George Police Officer Tiffany Mitchell told St. George News that Jimenez said he was heading west along Red Hills Parkway in heavy traffic when he came upon a line of vehicles that had slowed. He reportedly said he hit the brakes and then swerved to try to avoid a collision, but instead, he struck the back of the minivan on the driver’s side.
The force of the impact shattered two of the minivan’s rear windows and left the vehicle significantly damaged, Mitchell said, adding that the pickup truck’s front end on the passenger side sustained heavy damage as well.
Mitchell said a witness told police that shortly before the crash, they saw the pickup truck speed past them heading west on Red Hills Parkway, where it collided with the minivan seconds later.
While speaking to Jimenez, police say they noticed his eyes appeared bloodshot, his speech was slurred and the smell of alcohol could be detected on his breath, which led them to conduct a field sobriety test, of which the driver failed, according to the report.
Jimenez was arrested and booked into jail for suspected DUI and not having a driver’s license. He was later released on his own recognizance and the case is under review by the Washington County Attorney’s Office. Charges have yet to be filed in the case.
Officers ran a registration check on the minivan and spoke to the owner who said he had loaned the vehicle to an associate. However, Mitchell said the occupants in the minivan at the time of the crash had yet to be located by police at the time of this report.
No injuries were reported.
St. George News reporter Alysha Lundgren contributed to this report.
This report is based on statements from court records, police or other responders and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2023, all rights reserved.