SAN ANTONIO – A man trying to flee a deputy during a traffic stop was killed after he crashed his vehicle into a utility pole, sideswiped a tow truck and slammed into a parked U-Haul early Thursday morning, according to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office.
The crash happened around 1 a.m. in the 7000 block of West Military Drive, not far from Highway 90 and Westward Drive.
According to Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, a deputy had originally pulled over the driver on West Military, not far from Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, for going 63 mph in a 35 mph zone. That’s when, Salazar said, as the deputy approached the driver, he noticed what looked like narcotics on the passenger seat.
Salazar said the driver handed over a small bag containing pills and also told the deputy he had a gun in the car. The deputy then told the man to get out of the vehicle, but the man instead said no and sped off.
The sheriff said by the time the deputy got back into his car he had lost sight of the driver. The deputy drove around and found the wreckage about a mile down the road, on Military near Marbach Road.
Salazar said the man’s car had smashed through a utility pole and sheered off about 12 feet of it, before sideswiping a tow truck parked in the lot of an auto parts store and then slamming into a parked U-Haul truck. The driver, a man in his 20s or 30s, was ejected and pronounced dead at the scene, BCSO said.
Salazar said deputies later found a gun under him as well as a backpack in the car that contained vacuum sealed packages of marijuana as well as a scale. They also found several calibers of ammunition, BCSO said.
No one else was hurt in the crash. The investigation is ongoing, deputies said.