A man was arrested last week after crashing a black Chevrolet Camaro into multiple other vehicles at an intersection in Pearl, Mississippi. Charges against the 24-year old culprit involved reckless driving and not having any insurance.
The crash occurred in the early hours of the morning on August 23, according to the description of the video. The person who provided the dashcam footage saw the Camaro speeding across the southbound lane of the 475 North, hitting the median and smashing into a sedan.
While the impact was pretty violent, the Camaro didn’t carry a lot of extra momentum when it also made contact with that school bus, which was waiting its turn at the light – still, its driver was taken to the hospital (no children on board), as were the mother and child who were in the white sedan.
“I heard tire squealing and I knew something was happening,” said Clark Pennington, the owner of the dashcam. “So out of my peripheral vision I could see the car coming across the median and flipping and going into the other vehicles just ahead of me.”
“My first thoughts were is this gonna hit me. And when I saw that it wasn’t gonna hit me, I picked up the phone and dialed 911,” added the man. “Even though the car was still in the process of rolling I was on the phone with the 911 operator.”
As for why the driver of the Camaro did what they did, according to Pearl Police Lt. Brian McGairty, 24-year old Erik Payton was already speeding on the off ramp, which is where he began losing control. What’s interesting is that witnesses say Payton climbed out of his car and began checking on the other vehicles he struck, as reported by WLOX.
At that point, it was the least he could do.