Photo courtesy of White Settlement Police Department.
A man was detained by White Settlement police after driving to a restaurant parking lot with the body of a pedestrian he fatally struck on I-30 near Cockrell Hill Road in the vehicle, police say.
According to a press release from the White Settlement Police Department, officers responded to a Jack in the Box restaurant in the 8700 block of West Freeway on a welfare check call around 11:15 p.m. after receiving a report of a driver slumped over the steering wheel of a Kia Forte. The vehicle was described by authorities as having “extensive front-end, hood and windshield damage.”
An arrest warrant affidavit states the caller saw a man, 31-year-old Nestor Joel Lujan Flores, walked into the restaurant covered in blood and asked for a phone charger.
When police arrived to the scene, they found an unmoving body in the front passenger seat with both legs severed below the knee, according to WFAA. Police instructed Flores to exit the vehicle and emergency fire and medical personnel were called to the scene and determined the passenger, who has not been identified, was deceased.
At the time he was detained, Flores told White Settlement police he believed he hit an animal while driving in Dallas and continued to drive 40 miles to the White Settlement Jack in the Box, authorities say.
On Sunday morning, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department notified the White Settlement Police Department of an earlier crash on the westbound lane of I-30 at Cockrell Hill Road. After searching the scene, parts of a body “that may possibly match the victim’s body” were found near the roadway, police say. The Dallas County Medical Examiner’s office and Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office are working to make the identification of the victim.
The affidavit says investigators believe the Kia Forte was traveling on the right lane of the service road when it struck a person using the intersection crosswalk. Police say they believe based on the damage to the Kia Forte that the impact from the crash was enough to throw the pedestrian through the car windshield and into the vehicle’s passenger seat.
White Settlement police conducted a blood search warrant on Flores, who police say presented with slurred speech and smelled of alcohol.
“The results are not back,” White Settlement Police Chief Christopher Cook said Monday. “We’ll provide that to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office. But I can tell you that once we placed him in the back seat of our car, the officer commented that it smelled like a brewery in the back seat of his patrol car.”
The case is being transitioned to a criminal investigation with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office for prosecution in Dallas County. The seized Kia Forte will be turned over to Dallas County investigators, and Flores remains in the custody of the White Settlement Jail on a pending charge of Intoxication Manslaughter.
Flores was previously arrested in 2020 by the Plano Police Department for Driving While Intoxicated and convicted in 2021 in Collin County for the same charge.
