A DoorDash driver is in the hot seat after an intended taco delivery went awry, leaving a Plano home with thousands of dollars worth of damage.
Plano resident Melanie Uriegas was at work on Friday, December 13, when she received a call at about 11:30 a.m. from her daughter about a loud noise outside the family’s house on East Creek Place. She rushed home to find a pile of bricks and other debris in the home’s front entryway and garage area.
With the help of neighbors and police, Uriega was able to piece together the chain of events that led to the damage.
A neighbor who lives one street over had ordered tacos from Torchy’s Tacos in Richardson using the DoorDash delivery service. As he was tracking the delivery driver’s progress on the DoorDash app, he noticed the driver had turned on the wrong street in the neighborhood. This happens frequently, as many of the streets in the neighborhood have similar names, Uriegas told NBC 5 DFW.
As the neighbor began walking over to the next street to flag down the delivery driver, he saw the damaged home and another neighbor standing outside the home. The neighbor who lives next door to the damaged house said she came outside after hearing the loud noise.
“I heard a crash I came outside and saw the car driving away and I looked at the guy and I was like are you ok and he just looked at me and drove off,” the neighbor said, per Uriega, as reported by NBC 5.
The suspect’s vehicle is an older-model blue Toyota Corolla, which police said will likely show signs of serious damage to either the front or back end of the vehicle. It is still unclear how or why the driver jumped the curb, mowed down the landscaping and mailbox, and struck the front of the house. Police are looking for any surveillance videos in the neighborhood that may have captured the incident to assist in their investigation.
The neighbor who ordered the tacos continued tracking the driver via the app, and he gave that information to the police. He also called the DoorDash company to advise them of what happened.
Uriegas said she had to spend $800 on a construction expert to inspect the house and ensure it was still structurally safe to live in after the crash. She is hoping that DoorDash will step up and cover the cost of the repairs, which may be in the thousands of dollars.
“This is DoorDash, it’s their company, not my problem,” Uriegas said, per NBC 5. “Fix my house. I didn’t even order the food. We are totally innocent.”
Plano police are asking anyone with information on the hit-and-run delivery driver to contact the police department. The driver could face charges for leaving the scene of a crash.