RALEIGH, N.C. — Two 911 calls released Monday offer more insight into what happened after a pickup truck crashed early Friday outside Leesville High School, critically injuring a student.
Leesville High students met at O'Neal Road around 12:30 a.m. to pull a prank at the nearby school, according to a police report. They wore masks to conceal their identities, and officers later found evidence that some had been drinking beer in a school parking lot beforehand.
The students moved a boat some 75 feet from the parking lot, pushed it up against the cafeteria doors, and then began to run away.
About 10 of them headed for a black 2005 Ford F-150 driven by Alec William Esoda, 18.
Three students got in the front seat and Ian Anthony Bunn, 17, and the others hopped in the bed of the truck parked on a parking-lot access road facing Leesville Road, the report said.
Witnesses said Esoda put the truck in reverse and accelerated at excessive speed toward O'Neal Road. Esoda tried to perform a J-turn – in which a driver turns a vehicle going reverse 180 degrees and puts it in forward gear so it's going in the same direction. The truck overturned, and the passengers in the truck bed were ejected.
Bunn suffered massive head trauma and was taken to Rex Hospital by a student.
An
unidentified man called 911 from the emergency room and said, "I've got a passenger here at the ER that is banged up. He is claiming that the driver of the vehicle he was with flipped his vehicle somewhere near Leesville High School and took off running."
Bunn was listed in critical condition Tuesday at Rex Hospital. Esoda and other passengers weren't seriously injured.
After the wreck, some students fled the scene, and another called Esoda's father, Bill, who came out to the scene, the report said.
A
woman who identified herself as Bill's wife called 911 and told the operator that “We flipped our car. There’s no accident involved as far as anybody being hurt. We called AAA to have them send somebody out to flip it back, so we could get it off the road. They said that this is a police matter.”
When asked about the exact location of the vehicle, the woman said she wasn't at the scene, but her son and husband were there. She also identified the vehicle as a black Ford F150.
Officers arrived at 1:51 a.m. and found the overturned truck surrounded by several people who had backed a green Chevrolet truck up to it. They were trying to pull the truck back up onto its wheels, police said.
Officers arrested Esoda, of 12408 Tappersfield Court, Raleigh. He has been released on bond for charges of felony serious injury by vehicle, DWI, provisional DWI and reckless driving.
