A San Diego driver has pleaded guilty to a hit-and-run crash that sent a truck flying off the freeway and tumbling 50 feet to a parking lot below.
Jose Uribe, 21, admitted Monday to driving without a license and hit-and-run causing injury during the Sept. 21, 2014 incident.
As he was driving from Interstate 8 to north Interstate 805 that day, Uribe's brown Ford Excursion hit the back of a yellow Ford pickup truck, causing the truck to spin, flip over a guardrail and fall into the Dave and Buster’s parking lot in Mission Valley.
The man in the truck, Navy Petty Officer Kenneth Freudenvoll, suffered crushed second and fourth vertebrae when his vehicle landed hard on the concrete. A bone shard in his spine caused him to lose feelings in his legs.
Prosecutors say Uribe fled the scene because he was driving without a license. When California Highway Patrol officers later caught up with him, they said Uribe tried to change his tire and wipe off some of the paint damage caused by the collision.
Uribe’s passenger in his vehicle turned him in, according to prosecutors.
At the time of the crash, Uribe was on probation for false imprisonment and concealing evidence charges stemming from a 2012 rape case.
He will be sentenced on April 13.
