An allegedly intoxicated man drove roughly 40 miles with a dead body in his passenger seat over the weekend after incorrectly assuming he had run over an animal.
White Settlement police discovered a gruesome scene in the parking lot of a restaurant in the 8700 block of I-30 Service Road after responding to a welfare check Saturday evening.
Nestor Joel Lujan Flores, 31, was allegedly found slumped over the steering wheel of his gray Kia Forte, which had sustained significant damage. Next to Flores were the human remains of an individual believed to have been struck several hours earlier on the same service road near Cockrell Hill Road in Dallas.
Telling reporters that he had never seen anything like it, White Settlement Police Chief Christopher Cook explained that Flores said he thought he had hit a deer and continued driving west until arriving at the restaurant parking lot between 8 and 9 p.m. The force of the collision had apparently resulted in the victim bouncing off the hood and into the vehicle.
“It’s very unfortunate that [Flores] did not realize that this was a human being to stop and render aid and call for help,” Cook said, according to NBC 5 DFW. “When you’re impaired to this level where you hit a pedestrian on the roadway, and you think it’s an animal, that’s a significant impairment.”
Flores was arrested on pending charges of intoxication manslaughter and ordered to submit to a blood test. He reportedly has at least one prior DWI conviction from Collin County in 2021.
The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office will be taking over Flores’ case. The victim’s cause of death and identity have yet to be released by medical examiners.
Pedestrian fatalities in traffic accidents have soared in Dallas, which ranked highest in the number of pedestrian deaths among the top 20 largest cities in the United States, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Another analysis of the same data by ValuePenguin revealed that Dallas had five of the 25 deadliest roadways for pedestrians by city, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
Flores’ collision occurred in District 6, which Council Member Omar Narvaez represents. The council district is known for high levels of criminal activity related to the illicit sex trade as well as weapons violations, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. Of the 236 homicides that occurred citywide this year as of December 17, 19 were committed in District 6, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard.
Despite the efforts of the Dallas Police Department, criminality continues to be a problem, especially in Downtown Dallas, where significantly higher rates of motor vehicle theft, assault, and other offense categories are logged than in nearby Fort Worth’s downtown area, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
While Fort Worth monitors its city center with a special police unit and private security guards, DPD fields approximately 3,000 officers — far fewer than the 4,000 previously recommended by a City analysis to ensure public safety.