A Texas man is facing a charge of intoxicated manslaughter after he allegedly hit a pedestrian, then drove 38 miles with the victim’s body in the passenger seat. The accused, Nester Flores, 31, was arrested in the parking lot of a Jack in the Box fast-food franchise after a patron called the police to report a man slumped over the steering wheel inside a car that was heavily damaged.
Upon arriving at the scene, police officers found Flores in a car with a dead man in the passenger seat. The vehicle’s hood was caved in, and the windshield was almost entirely destroyed. The passenger was missing some body parts, and Flores claimed he thought he had hit a deer.
“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, and in all my 28 years, I have never really worked a case like this,” said White Settlement Chief of Police Christopher Cook at a press conference on Sunday.
Flores is being held at the White Settlement Police Jail. His blood tests have not yet been conducted to confirm if he was driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office has taken over the case.
The incident has shaken the community, and people are outraged at the callousness of the accused. Flores’s actions have raised serious doubts about the need for stricter drunk-driving laws.
Drunk-driving is a severe issue in Texas, which is one of the worst states in the country in terms of the rate of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities. It is estimated that every 20 minutes, someone is hurt, or killed in a drunk driving crash in the United States.
