Driver says he hit a deer, police found a dead body in his car

By JOHANNAH GRENAWAY, OLIVIA LEACH | KTVT

NORTH TEXAS (KTVT) — A deadly collision in Dallas is leaving police, and even veteran officers, stunned after the pedestrian victim was found in the driver’s passenger seat 40 miles away.

“When you’re impaired to this level, where you hit a pedestrian on the roadway and you think it’s an animal, that’s a significant impairment and, in all my 28 years, I have never really worked a case like this,” White Settlement Chief of Police Christopher Cook said at the press conference Sunday morning.

Authorities are still trying to figure out exactly what happened Saturday night, but they’re putting the pieces together.

Around 11:00 p.m., a concerned citizen called in a report of a driver who appeared to be slumped over their steering wheel in the parking lot of a local Jack in the Box restaurant. That caller also reported the grey Kia Forte had extensive damage to its front hood and windshield.

When police got to the scene, they found the driver, but also another person in the front passenger seat who was later pronounced dead by EMS.

Police immediately detained the driver, 31-year-old Nester Lujuan Flores of Arlington, who they say was intoxicated.

Flores told the responding officer he believed he hit a deer somewhere in Dallas. But, Flores, who ended up in Fort Worth around 8:00 p.m., never called 911 to report any incident.

Detectives say based on the evidence, they believe Flores hit the person with his car somewhere between Arlington and White Settlement and that the impact was so severe, that the person was thrown inside of the Kia Forte. Cook said Sunday that there was “significant trauma to the body … to include missing some body parts.”

“This scene was really hard for our fire teams, our police teams, our MedStar teams to even work a case like this,” he shared.

Police found 31-year-old Nester Lujuan Flores parked in this Kia Forte after getting a call from a concerned citizen.

“What the frustration is for our teams is that [this] is avoidable,” Cook continued. “People do not need to get behind the wheel. We talk about it all the time—make good decisions. There’s rideshare services, there’s friends, there’s just other things you can do besides getting behind the wheel.”

Flores is facing charges of intoxication, manslaughter and possibly failure to stop and render aid. Cook shared Sunday that Flores was previously arrested with a DWI in 2020 by Plano police and convicted in 2021.