Updated Dec. 29, 8:24 p.m.–
Sentinel staff report– Northbound lanes of Auburn Boulevard near Greenback Lane were shut down for about five hours Thursday after police say a suspected DUI driver struck a skateboarder, sending her through the windshield and into the passenger side of his vehicle. He then fled the scene with her inside.
Citrus Heights police said the collision was reported around 5:40 p.m. Thursday on Auburn Boulevard, near Charwood Lane, with a witness stating that the skateboarder and involved vehicle were no longer at the scene. Responding officers located a skateboard and pair of shoes at the scene prior to receiving a call around 5:55 p.m. from a woman who “indicated she was involved in a vehicle collision, but did not know where she was at,” police said in a news release about the incident.
Police were soon notified by another caller that a vehicle and a woman with major injuries were located on the 6900 block of Mariposa Avenue, about two miles from the collision site. Officers arrived and found a 27-year-old woman inside the vehicle and determined she was the skateboarder who had been hit on Auburn Boulevard. She was taken to a local hospital with major, but non-life-threatening, injuries.
After searching the area for the driver, officers located a man nearby with injuries on his body and other evidence indicating he had been involved in a collision. The man, 27-year-old Angel Huerta, of Sacramento, was subsequently arrested and charged with felony DUI, felony hit-and-run, kidnapping, and violation of parole.
Police said Huerta was on parole for robbery and a prior felony DUI incident. A news story published Friday by CBS Sacramento includes an interview with a man who said he had been hit by Huerta in a 2011 vehicle collision, which the news station confirmed was Huerta’s prior DUI incident.
“Our California judicial system is too lax,” Derek Roberts, the prior victim, told the TV station following Thursday night’s collision. “Something’s not right when somebody can create a second felony DUI seven years later and they’re not accountable… it should have stopped with me.”
Anyone with information related to the Thursday’s collision is asked to contact the Citrus Heights Police Department’s non-emergency line at (916) 727-5500.
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