Van drags her, hero saves her
Published: February 12, 2007
A schoolgirl crossing a West St. Paul street survived being struck by a van and dragged underneath for more than a third of a mile Sunday night.
If she recovers, she may owe her life to an alert driver who followed in his car and forced the van’s driver to stop.
The victim, Gladys Reyes, 11, of West St. Paul, remained in critical condition Monday in the burn unit of Regions Hospital in St. Paul.
The van’s driver, Mauricio Sanchez, 33, of St. Paul, is in the Dakota County jail and could face charges of criminal vehicular operation resulting in great bodily harm, leaving the scene of an accident and driving with a suspended license.
David Carrera, 46, of South St. Paul, the driver who witnessed the accident and forced the van’s driver off the road, said he was just acting on instinct when he came to the girl’s assistance.
But West St. Paul Police Chief Manila “Bud” Shaver called the St. Paul factory worker a quick-thinking hero who did some nifty driving.
“I think she would have been dead in another block or so. Without this good Samaritan, this driver would have kept on driving,” Shaver said. “I don’t know if he knew whether he was dragging her or not. As a driver, you kind of got to know whether you hit an object or not.”
Shaver said the accident happened about 6 p.m. Sunday as Gladys and another girl crossed Wentworth Avenue going south near the South Robert Street intersection. The initial indication is that the girls had a walk signal to cross.
Shaver said a southbound van driven by Sanchez turned left from South Robert Street, struck Gladys in the crosswalk and kept going eastbound on Wentworth Avenue for several hundred yards.
Carrera was driving north on South Robert Street with his wife and 4-year-old daughter. He saw the collision from 100 feet away.
“I saw the girl go down. His front wheel was locked up on the front part of her body,” Carrera said in an interview from his home. He said the girl’s friend banged on the van’s window, but the driver kept going.
As he called 911 from his cell phone, Carrera turned onto Wentworth in pursuit. He pulled alongside the van on its left side and signaled the driver to stop. When that failed, Carrera raced ahead of the van and slowed.
Rather than stop, the suspect turned right into the parking lot of Silver Dog grooming studio at 280 Wentworth Ave., just west of the Oakdale Avenue intersection.
Carrera put his car in reverse, followed the van roughly 500 feet to the far end of the parking lot, where it came to a stop. Sanchez fled south on foot for several hundred yards before officers arrested him, police said.
Markings from Minnesota State Patrol investigators show the outlines of where Gladys’ body and van came to rest, some 15 feet apart.
Coincidentally, Carrera knew the victim’s parents, Jose and Maria Reyes, from parenting classes they took together several years ago. Both families are from Durango, Mexico. Carrera’s wife, Antonia, spent Sunday night in Regions Hospital comforting the Reyes family as they waited outside an operating room for reports about their daughter’s fragile condition.
“This is a really poor family from what I can see,” Antonia Carrera said. “Maybe the community should try to get together and help this family out.”
The girl’s father works in construction, and the mother is a hotel maid in Bloomington, the Carreras said.
The Carreras said the two girls were coming home from a fast-food restaurant and walking to the bus stop at the southeast corner of Robert and Wentworth when the accident happened.
Gladys Reyes is a sixth-grader at Heritage Middle School in West St. Paul.
Principal Chris Hiti said she has a brother who is in eighth grade. The friend with Gladys when she was struck also is a student there.
Hiti talked to sixth-graders about the accident. He called Gladys “a fun-loving girl, high-spirited and very friendly.”
The victim’s friend teared up in a Regions Hospital waiting room as she described Gladys as a funny girl who loved dancing to rap and Latin music.
“People are crazy. He’s a crazy guy,” Carrera said of the suspect. “Why did he drag her for so long?”
Carrera didn’t want to draw attention to himself, but his actions in stopping the accident are drawing admirers. One of them is his wife.
“I didn’t know that part of you,” she told him. “You were really brave.”
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