Out of control driver damages 16 vehicles in South Philadelphia
SOUTH PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Dozens of people woke up to the sounds of an out of control driver smashing into cars in a South Philadelphia neighborhood.
The incident happened just before 11 p.m. Friday in the area of Third and Porter Streets.
The driver smashed a truck into 16 cars.
It was a pretty scary couple of minutes.
It's hard to see but you can clearly hear what's happening.
Police say a man in a Ford pickup truck smashed into 16 cars near Porter and 3rd around 10:30 last night.
Finally, neighbors would put a stop the chaos and yank him out of his truck.
Mike Magee was one of those good Samaritans.
"I was able to open the door up. He was fighting back. Grabbed him out of the car," he said.
His quick thinking likely prevented further damage.
"We had to stop him because we don't know if he's going all the way down the block, hit somebody kills somebody," Magee added.
One of the SUVs damaged belonged to Zack Laska of South Philadelphia.
He says he and his girlfriend Brenna were inside watching a movie then this truck came crashing into their Chevy Equinox.
Laska said, "Next thing you know you heard a loud banging and come to the door you see a truck slide of next to your car."
Brenna Howeltt of South Philadelphia added, "It may be totaled, pretty close to totaled. My car got hit four times. He just kept coming at my car."
Neighbors say he didn't hit any of the cars on the right side of the road, that he just continuously rammed cars down the left side. And he hit some of them so hard they launched up onto the sidewalk.
"That vehicle ended up three wheels on the curb at that point I grabbed her. She's 8 and a half months and got her back inside. You didn't know if it was going to keep coming up into the houses."
Police have now identified the driver as 43-year-old James Keyser of Wolf Street.
He's been arrested for DUI.
Magee and neighbors say he put up quite a struggle before police arrived.
"He was saying I'm from the neighborhood, I'm from the neighborhood and I said I don't care. If my kid was out here he would have been killed," Magee said.
"He definitely was resisting, trying to get the heck outta here," added Magee.
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