A woman accused of stealing an SUV with two children inside, and crashing the Jeep into a home, remained in the Denver jail today.
Mary Torres, 27, of Denver, was arrested Thursday night as she walked away after a crash in the 2100 block of West 40th Avenue, police said.
Earlier in the evening, Torres had been a passenger in a Jeep Cherokee with a couple, their 2-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old boy, according to Wheat Ridge Police Department.
While the couple was shopping in a store near Wadsworth Boulevard and West 38th Avenue, Torres allegedly drove off in the Jeep along with the children, clipping another car before eventually smashing into the house.
Lisa Liebelt, 22, said Friday that she and her husband, Travis Fancher, 24, were the couple in the Jeep. The children were their 2-year-old daughter and Liebelt’s 3-year-old cousin.
Liebelt said she had met Torres for the first time only a couple of hours before the incident. Torres is an acquaintance of Liebelt’s uncle.
“Yesterday was the first time I had ever met her,” Liebelt said.
She said that when she and her husband left the 1999 Jeep Cherokee, she pulled the keys from the ignition and put them in a coat jacket, but they slipped from the pocket unnoticed as she got out of the Jeep.
“This was a freak accident, while we were inside the store the chick just took off,” Liebelt said. “She seemed completely fine. I don’t understand what happened, she just snapped. The whole thing is such a nasty mess.”
The Jeep with the kids in the back, driven by Torres, rear-ended a vehicle at West 38th Avenue and Fenton Street, Wheat Ridge police said. The vehicle and a nearby brick wall were damaged. The Jeep continued south on Fenton Street.
At 7:25 p.m., Denver police got a call about a Jeep plowing into a home.
Fred Mejia was at home watching television upstairs when he felt his house shake.
“I thought a piece of a plane fell from the sky and hit the house,” Mejia recalled. “It was like a bomb, I didn’t know what to think.”
Denver police said Torres tried to run away, leaving the children behind in the damaged SUV, but officers found her nearby.
Both children were in their safety seats and were not injured in the incident.
Wheat Ridge police suspect alcohol or drugs were involved in the theft and crash.
Liebelt said she did not see Torres drink any alcohol in the couple of hours they spent together.
Torres was being held Friday in Denver on several outstanding warrants including failure to appear on a 2008 felony forgery case in Lakewood, according to a Denver jail staffer and Colorado Bureau of Investigation records.
Records also show Torres has a lenghty criminal record including two previous DUI arrests in 2005 and in 2006. She was currently on probation after a Denver court found her guilty of second degree assault in March of 2010. The assault incident occured while she was on a previous probation sentence for criminal impersonation.
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com.
