A Houston DoorDash driver got slammed onto the hood of a suspect’s car during a police chase, then climbed off, grabbed the food from the street and finished the order anyway.
The chaos started when police tried to stop Torrance Whitaker, an alleged burglary suspect, before the pursuit spilled into a residential neighborhood.
ABC13 obtained surveillance video from a home across the street showing the crash from the neighbor’s angle.
In the footage, the delivery driver is struck near her car and lands on the hood of the sedan. The food goes flying before Whitaker, 35, bails from the vehicle and disappears from the camera’s view.
For a moment, the driver appears to watch the chase unfold around her.
Then she gets off the hood, retrieves the order and walks it to the customer’s door.
With officers chasing Whitaker, she still turned back to the home and completed the drop-off, carefully placing the food where it was supposed to go.
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An officer could be heard checking on her after the crash.
“Yeah, I’m good,” she replied. The officer then appeared to direct her to sit on the lawn.
Lily Portillo, whose cameras also captured the scene, told the outlet that she was on the phone with her husband when the chase suddenly landed outside her home.
“I was on the phone with my husband, and I just hear somebody crash. So I’m like, wait a minute, I heard something from police. When he came out from my door, I think it was HPD parked on my mulch, like what happened here!,” Portillo recalled.
What stayed with Portillo was not just the crash, but the driver’s decision to keep working after being hit.
“It’s amazing how the girl just delivered the food. I asked her if she was OK, and she said she was OK. She needs a big tip. I really hope somebody finds her and hope she’s OK.”
The pursuit kept moving through the neighborhood, with police saying Whitaker went through five backyards and over multiple fences while trying to escape.
Steve Jones, another neighbor whose surveillance cameras recorded Whitaker cutting through his yard, watched the chase continue down the block.
“He went through two more yards, and then came out two more houses down in the front yard bushes,” Jones told ABC13.
A Houston Police K-9 helped end the chase. “And the dog brought him out. And I thought this was Live PD,” Jones added, referencing the TV show.
Police confirmed that K-9 units helped capture Whitaker after the yard-to-yard pursuit.
The driver later told the outlet that she wanted to stay anonymous. She was hurting badly but did not break any bones and was considering a claim against the suspect’s insurance.
The crash added an aggravated assault count to Whitaker’s case, according to court documents cited by the outlet. He was also charged with burglary and evading arrest with a vehicle.
Court records show he had already been wanted for burglary before the attempted traffic stop. The other charges appeared to stem from the chase and the delivery driver being hit.
His bonds totaled $120,000, sheriff’s office records showed, and the largest piece was the $75,000 aggravated assault bond.
Another recent crash tied to alleged criminal driving left a Florida beach worker dead.
In June, a pickup slammed into a toll booth at a beach access ramp in Daytona Beach Shores and continued onto the sand.
The Volusia Sheriff’s Office placed the wreck at the Dunlawton Avenue beach access ramp around 12:40 p.m.
Tammy Jo Baker, the employee inside the booth, was just weeks shy of her 63rd birthday, Sheriff Mike Chitwood stated at the scene.
The truck was “probably doing about 40 mph,” Chitwood noted. “And it crushes the toll taker’s booth.”
Lifeguards tried to save Baker with CPR, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
The pickup did not stop at the booth. Officials said Deanna Harrell, 35, kept going toward the water, tried to turn around and got stuck in the sand.
Bystanders ran to the truck and pulled Harrell out.
Chitwood stated that Harrell was being tested for possible impairment and said there was a “heavy odor of alcohol” coming from the vehicle.
Harrell’s case is now moving forward on DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide charges, with a Volusia County judge ordering her held without bond in June.
Her court-appointed public defender did not oppose the state’s request for detention.
“The state and the defense is not objecting to the pretrial detention hearing this afternoon,” the attorney told the court. “And we would stipulate that if the state were to present evidence that they would be able to meet the standard of the statute.”
The strangest explanation came out of Minnesota, where investigators say a driver blamed a fatal head-on crash on her dog grabbing the wheel.
Prosecutors in Roseau County charged Shauna Rae Dokken, 43, with criminal vehicular homicide while operating a vehicle in a grossly negligent manner.
Barbara Lee Welberg, 82, died in the June 27 collision on Minnesota Highway 11.
Before the crash, multiple motorists had already reported erratic driving, according to a criminal complaint.
One witness told investigators he called 911 and tried to follow Dokken’s truck for a license plate number after seeing it cross fully into oncoming traffic.
Investigators say Dokken’s Ford F-250 ended up over the center line before the head-on impact with Welberg’s Kia Sorento.
Welberg died at the scene. Dokken was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening.
At one point, according to the complaint, Dokken blamed the crash on her dog, claiming it interfered with the vehicle and grabbed the steering wheel.
Troopers noted that Dokken appeared to have slurred speech, court records state.
Dokken told investigators she had taken prescription medications but denied drinking. Her preliminary breath test registered 0.00, according to the complaint.
Her significant other told investigators Dokken had been known to misuse her medications by snorting them rather than taking them as prescribed, according to the complaint.
