WATSONVILLE—Two people, including a Watsonville firefighter, were injured on the Fourth of July after a suspected DUI driver plowed into several vehicles and a group of people at the scene of a fire on the 100 block of Miles Lane.
Watsonville Police Department spokeswoman Michelle Pulido said Rosendo Avila Aguilar, 28, of Salinas, was arrested for felony hit-and-run and DUI causing injuries after slamming his black pickup truck into a Watsonville Fire Department vehicle and then backing into several parked cars, a firefighter and a bystander.
Watsonville Fire Battalion Chief Jon Golding said Avila Aguilar crashed into a Dodge Ram fire command vehicle after driving past a fire engine responding to a 60-by-20-foot grass fire around 9:15pm on the Fourth of July. Aguilar then backed up and struck the parked vehicles and people, Pulido said.
Nearby residents rushed in and took Aguilar from his vehicle and detained him as officers were responding to the incident, Pulido said.
“The victims were taken to the hospital and they are expected to be OK,” Pulido said.
On Monday Golding said the injured firefighter, who has not been named, was released from the hospital without major trauma.
“It was crazy out here last night,” said one woman who has lived in the area for the past 20 years and who did not want to disclose her name.
“This is a nice neighborhood with working people, many who don’t have a lot,” she said. “That man hit several of the cars out here—cars that people worked hard to buy and take care of and be proud of. It’s just sad. I see and hear people drive really fast through here all the time.”
The incident is still under investigation.
The cause of the fire has not yet been revealed.
The arrest was part of a busy Independence Day weekend for Watsonville’s first responders.
WPD made at least another DUI-related arrest, and also arrested a man trying to break into a fireworks booth at the Nob Hill Shopping Center early Sunday.
In another possibly related fireworks theft, a storage container housing so-called “safe-and-sane” fireworks was ransacked on Saturday night. The fireworks were being sold at a booth benefiting the Watsonville Jr. Wildcatz.
