The Juneau Police Department is investigating a possible DWI this weekend that left a passenger injured and the driver nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n
JPD received multiple calls at 1:04 a.m. Saturday from residents around 20 Mile Glacier Highway, near Randall Road, who heard a motor vehicle crash and somebody screaming, said Lt. Kris Sell.<\/p>\n
When officers arrived on scene, Sell said a red 1999 Saturn was sitting in the middle of the road. It had been further out the road and was driving toward town.<\/p>\n
\u201cIts front bumper was ripped off, the passenger side tires were ripped off, the passenger side exterior panels were gone, there was debris all over the highway for a couple of hundred yards, and a fire hydrant was torn off its base,\u201d Sell said in an interview Monday.<\/p>\n
The passenger, a 20-year-old Juneau resident, was lying on the ground near the car with facial injuries and a decreased level of consciousness. Sell said he was transported to Bartlett Regional Hospital.<\/p>\n
People on scene told officers the driver of the Saturn had left in another vehicle. Sell said paperwork in the Saturn was associated with a 19-year-old man.<\/p>\n
Officers found the driver around 2 a.m. at a family residence on the 9100 block of Riverwood Drive. Sell said he was originally brought to Juneau Police Department but \u201cgiven the severity of the crash and the high level of impact,\u201d he was also transported to Bartlett by ambulance for precautionary reasons.<\/p>\n
Sell said police are awaiting results back from blood tests, but believe alcohol was \u201cdefinitely involved.\u201d Pending charges on the driver include driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vehicle that crashed was traveling at \u2014 what we\u2019re thinking based on the scene \u2014 a high rate of speed, and the driver lost control,\u201d Sell said.<\/p>\n
When it happened, several vehicles containing people in their late teens and early 20s had stopped in the street. Sell said they all seemed to know each other and were associated with the crashed car.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis can be a dangerous time of year for young people. They think going out the road where nobody is around and drinking is going to be a lot of fun,\u201d Sell said. \u201cYou can imagine what was happening in that car. They\u2019re thinking they\u2019re invincible, and it only takes a moment for everything to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sell said neither the driver nor the passenger had any life-threatening injuries. Aside from facial injuries, she said the passenger might have a broken ankle as a result of the crash. But Sell said it could\u2019ve been a lot worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at the pictures I\u2019ve seen of the car from the officers on scene, it is truly a notable development that they survived this crash.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Juneau Police Department is investigating a possible DWI this weekend that left a passenger injured and the driver nowhere to be seen. JPD received multiple calls at 1:04 a.m. Saturday from residents around 20 Mile Glacier Highway, near Randall Road, who heard a motor vehicle crash and somebody screaming, said Lt. Kris Sell. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-18357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18357"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}