A cab driver who saw a car-pedestrian accident that seriously injured a young woman early Saturday near the University of Denver says moments before the crash, the car and another vehicle raced around him.
The woman, identified as Lindsey Howland, 24, was struck by the car as she crossed Evans Avenue between University Boulevard and Josephine Street.
Howland was taken to Swedish Medical Center following the 1:45 a.m. crash, said Sonny Jackson, Denver police spokesman. She was in critical condition Saturday night.
Police arrested Robert Jesse Gallegos, 22, for investigation of hit and run, drunken driving and vehicular assault, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records.
Gallegos’ sister Lola Gallegos, 34, who was in the car at the time of the accident, said her brother was not speeding and stopped less than two blocks from the accident and returned to the scene when their parents arrived after she had called them.
Lola Gallegos said her younger brother was not drunk and she had him drive her car because she was.
Less than a half hour before the accident, a patrol car pulled them over at Interstate 225 and Parker Road and had Robert Gallegos perform a sobriety test, she said. He passed the test and the officers permitted him to drive away, she said.
They immediately drove toward the University of Denver, close to where their parents live.
Taxi driver Kenneth Ward said he was driving west on East Evans Avenue when two cars whizzed past him, gunning their engines.
“They had their foot on it,” Ward said.
He said several people were emptying out of a nearby bar at the time. Ward estimated the vehicles were going about 50 mph.
When the two cars were about a block ahead of him, just past Josephine, he said saw a large object fly off of one of the two vehicles and up to 15 feet into the air.
Ward said when he drove closer he could see that the object was a woman.
“She was lying motionless in the street,” he said. “It was sickening.”
Lola Gallegos said she didn’t see the accident.
“It was as if someone fell from the sky. It was like out of the blue,” she said. “My brother said, ‘We hit something. We hit something. I think a girl jumped into the car.’ We pulled over and tried to figure out what happened.”
After striking the young woman, who is not a DU student, the car went west on East Evans, Jackson said.
Lola Gallegos denied that her brother had fled the scene.
“It just took my brother a while to register what had happened,” she said. “It happened so fast.”
Ward said the other vehicle that had been driving next to the one involved in the crash — a white SUV — kept going west on Evans.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
