A driver who crashed his car into a van filled with children but wished to stay out of trouble for smoking marijuana earlier in the day has been arrested for impairment. He is also facing multiple counts of child abuse-recklessness.
NBC News Channel 12 in Phoenix reports that Phoenix Police officers have arrested Derek Sprunk, 30, on suspicion of impairment, recklessness, child abuse recklessness, failure to stay at the scene of a crash and other related charges.
Derek Sprunk crashed his vehicle into a Ford van being driven by a woman and carrying a second woman and 11 children inside along Loop 202. Both Sprunk and the woman driving the van exited the highway at the 24th street off-ramp, meeting up in a nearby parking lot. The woman driving the van guessed that it was in order to exchange insurance information.
Instead, Sprunk asked the woman if he could pay for any damages in but to keep the police out of it. The woman, whose identity and company were not released by authorities, informed Sprunk that the van she was driving was a company-issued vehicle so she couldn’t accept the cash. She also told him that the police had already been called regarding the accident.
Sprunk then got back into his vehicle and left the parking lot without leaving identification, contact or insurance information; but not before the second woman in the van at the time of the crash managed to take a cellphone picture of Sprunk’s license plate. It was this information that assisted police in finding him.
No one in the van was injured in the crash. All of the children told officers at the scene, however, that they had been frightened by the incident.
When police interviewed Sprunk, the registered owner of the vehicle in the crash, he admitted to the officers that he had accidentally struck the For van and left because he didn’t want to be arrested for driving while impaired.
Officers found front end damage to Sprunk’s vehicle and arrested him on six counts of child abuse-recklessness, one count of endangerment and one count of failure to stay at the scene of an accident.
Phoenix Police Department investigators met with the parents or guardians of six of the 11 children. All offered their full cooperation and assistance in Sprunk’s prosecution on behalf of their child.
