A New Mexico man accused of killing a woman in a drunk-driving crash fled the scene and called his father for a ride — only to have his own dad flag down police and point him out, according to a criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime.
Demetrius Thomas, 34, is charged in connection with the death of a woman struck by a gray Ford SUV near Central Avenue NE and Texas Street SE in Albuquerque on Sept. 25.
Rather than stop, Thomas allegedly drove roughly 0.6 miles back to his apartment, leaving the victim in the road as bystanders tried to save her with CPR.
When officers reached the crash site, a man waved them down and pointed to a gray SUV heading away from the scene. That man turned out to be Thomas’ father, the complaint states.
“Come over here because he’s the one who f—ing did it,” the father reportedly told police.
The SUV Thomas had been driving showed damage to the front passenger-side bumper and hood, and its windshield was crushed inward on the passenger side. Thomas got out of the vehicle and was taken into custody.
Detectives later determined Thomas had phoned his father after the crash asking for a ride. “I’m like son, what the f— do you want me to do?” the father allegedly recalled telling him. “Um, you gotta go back over there. You hit somebody. You don’t know if they hurt or not, you gotta go back over there.”
Thomas’ father also asked whether his son had been drinking. “Yeah,” Thomas allegedly answered.
Yet when police questioned him directly, Thomas initially denied using anything that would have impaired his driving — no alcohol, no drugs.
Later, as officers were placing him in a patrol car, he was asked again about drinking. This time he admitted to having “one shot of Admiral Nelson around 9 a.m.,” according to the complaint.
Thomas then gave his account of the crash. “She ran out in front of me and I didn’t want to stop,” he allegedly said, adding that he’d been driving the speed limit because “there’s a camera right there.”
“I stepped on the brake and she hit, she ran into the car and I got scared,” he told investigators, per the complaint.
He reportedly admitted going home afterward out of fear, and said it was his parents who urged him to turn himself in.
Investigators later obtained surveillance video from an Albuquerque Transit bus showing Thomas’ SUV drifting between the left and center lanes on Central Avenue. The footage captures the victim crossing the road heading south, then breaking into a run before being struck on the SUV’s passenger side. Police say she died instantly.
Thomas reportedly failed field sobriety testing, and officers determined he’d been driving impaired. He now faces charges of homicide by vehicle-DWI and knowingly leaving the scene of a fatal crash.
