A Jeep collision left one passenger without an arm – that the driver drove off with and then threw in a dumpster, according to a news release from the Tucson Police Department.
Police arrested the 26-year-old driver after he abandoned the Jeep, threw his passenger’s arm in the trash and went home.
The driver was booked into Pima County Jail Sept. 16 and charged with leaving the scene of an accident with serious injury and, for throwing away the arm, tampering with evidence.
The collision occurred just after midnight on Sept. 15 when the man driving the vehicle and three other men got into an argument as they were riding in the 2007 Jeep Liberty.
They had been leaving the Fourth Avenue area and, for a still unknown reason, the driver rammed into a tree near Seventh Street and Hoff Avenue while one of the rear passengers had been partly out of the vehicle.
That’s the man who lost his arm. Police found him on the scene suffering from life-threatening injuries. He was taken to a local hospital where he remains in critical but stable condition.
Police found the Jeep abandoned at an apartment complex at near 10th Street and Mountain Avenue, which also housed the dumpster that contained the arm.
No word yet on what happened to the other two passengers or if physicians were able to reattach the arm.
UPDATE 09/21/2009
Physicians were unable to attach the victim’s arm, said Tucson police spokesman Sgt. Fabian Pacheco in an e-mail, and the victim remains in stable condition.
The victim was the only one of the four who is in active military duty and the other two passengers were only witnesses to the incident, Pacheco said. They provided statements and were released.
Pacheco also confirmed that the incident was alcohol-related.
UPDATE 04/13/2013
The name and photo of the driver arrested in this incident has been removed from this posting. Ryndustries is open to being fair, since life certainly isn’t, and removed the specifics at the request of one of the men involved.
Sounds like a David Lynch movie.
…as long as it’s not backed up by that annoying Blue Velvet song it could be.
Mornin’ Rynski! I had heard these guys were airmen on the news. Gonna be hell to pay with the commandant of DM. Maybe they thought nobody would notice the dude’s missing arm? Strange story.
Mornin’ Radmax – that makes it all the worse if these were airmen – aren’t folks in the military supposed to watch each other’s backs? geesh.
Rynski-this is exactly the reason dumpster-clothing should often be avoided… 🙂
Can you imagine?
you got me with that one, radmax!
Yuck. Can you imagine driving around with some one’s arm in your vehicle with you? That alone is creepy.
I do hope the kid who lost his arm will be alright. It’s a shame the guy with the arm didn’t take the right measures so that maybe they could’ve reattached it
How about a guy spurting blood profusely all over the place because of his missing appendage? The driver must have zoned out to act this way.
The guy who lost his arm was no longer in the jeep – he was found at the scene of the crash. my hypothesis is that his arm stayed in the jeep while his body was wrenched out of the vehicle. eek!
AZMouse, you’re right – it is VERY creepy to drive around with severed arm in your jeep. even if i were mad at someone, i think i’d go out of my way to help them get their arm re-attached if something like this happened. but then again, we really don’t know the whole story….
The way they told the story on the news made it sound like the driver was in the car, and the guy that lost his arm was angry and outside of the car, but holding onto the driver with ‘the arm’. The driver sped off, side swiped a tree and that’s when the arm came off.
wow. wonder if it was still clutching the driver?
That would be awful too.
The guy arrested isn’t in the air force, I don’t think.
he’s not in the ARMy
the guy ran with it because he figured ‘no arm no foul’
This is actually very funny. Good on ya!
I smell alcohol all over this one.
i thought of that, too. definitely.
Now, if they had been at home smoking pot and eating cheetos, they’d have been too full and too indifferent to go out in the car. Anyway, even if they decided to go out, by the time they had found the keys, they would have forgotten what they intended to do in the first place.
that’s right. pot just makes you hug one another, not throw each other’s arms in the dumpster, right?
The news report also mentioned they had been ‘partying’ on 4th ave.
Which arm? This story is kinda short on importnat details.
right arm
This was my friend that lost his arm….I went to tech school with him in the Air Force, The man that did this too him should pay indefinately………
Sorry to hear about your friend.
It was a sick and horrible thing to happen to someone. I hope your friend is doing okay.
YOUR FRIEND WAS THE ONE THAT TRIED TO CARJACK HIM!
The airmen who lost him arm was my brother. He was not outside the car nor was he choking anyone. the other asshole who remained in the back seat w/ my brother’s severed arm for 7 blocks was choking the driver which made him frk and lose control. He is in bad shape and more than just his severed arm……… Both of them boys the driver and the choker deserve to rot in HELL!!!!!!!
If your brother wasn’t outside the car how did his arm get severed?
I dont think this person knows what they are talking about. There was only one person in the car choking the driver and the airmen running after the jeep. If they were really the guys brother then they would know this.. Kinda creepy to have someone call themselves a victims sibling when they probably are not. (Stalker?)….
All i can say is that most of these statements are based on the media’s representation of the story. Listening to KGUN or any other media source is no different than picking up a copy of the national inquirer and finding out bigfoot lives in PHX and is married with five kids.
The fact is i saw this event and the driver was being choked and was trying to get the two men off of him. The airmen was outside of the car a number of times and was running after the jeep (hence why the jeep was seen stopping and going), this was due to the fact that he would stop and attempt the assaulter in the vehicle to stop choking him, but the airman would continue to attempt to jump into the car and try to attack the driver as well.
The second guy in the car was locked on the drivers throat and yelling he was going to kill him.
The airman pulled a stunt by holding on to the vehicle and trying to reach into the front seat and trying to either control the wheel, assult the driver or even open the door of the driver, maybe even all of these at once.
No matter the point of what that airmen was doing, he was obviously placing himself in harms way by chasing the car. The question is why?
Why was the driver placed in a choke hold and being chased by and airmen who both seemed so adamant about gaining access to his car.
I didnt see much else other than the vehicle turned down an alley and that was all..
I understand and feel for the victims in this tragic event, because it seems like there are victims on both ends of this story.
Hope all works for the best to all involved….
First of all there was no attempted carjacking. As for as “local bystander” I assume you have given your name and a statement to the police as you don’t know what the hell you are talking about. The kid that lost his arm was in the back seat behind the passenger and hanging out of the car so how on earth could he be assaulting the driver. He was chasing the car to get in as this was the person who drove to the bar. It’s a shame how the victim is blamed. As far as personnallyinvolved he is his brother and I am his grandmother and I hope they rot in hell also!!!!!
wait how can someone be inside a car and outside a car at the same time? I was there ma’am. Your grandson and his friend choking the driver were at fault. I SAW the other guy choking the driver so how can two people fit in the same seat area behind the driver? was the other passenger pushing the airmen out of the car? What was the airmen’s purpose?
PLEASE READ MY COMMIT AGAIN. HE WAS TRYING TO GET IN THE CAR WHEN THE DRIVER TOOK OFF AND HE WASN’T TOTALLY IN. HE WAS GETTING IN THE BACK SEAT ON THE PASSENGER SIDE WHEN THE DRIVER TOOK OFF. THE COURTS WILL DECIDE WHOSE FAULT IT WAS. DID YOU GIVE A STATEMENT TO THE POLICE?
Local bystander…I agree. And just to let all of you know there was a LOT of alcohol involved in this one. I just recently met NAME EDITED OUT PER REQUEST and heard from people that were out with him that evening that he was drunk as well as all of the other boys. They were being rowdy and when Joe tried to kick them out of his vehicle a fight ensued. I am terribly sorry for the tragic event that transpired but all of them are equally at fault here 1) don’t try to choke someone while they are driving 2) if you are not a trained stuntman don’t hang on to a moving vehicle and 3)don’t leave the scene of the accident and dump said appendages 4)it’s called a designated driver kids . NONE of them should have been anywhere near a vehicle that intoxicated.