Five pedestrians injured, two critically, in hit-and-run crash in northwest Las Vegas Valley

Two adults and three children were injured Saturday night when the pedestrians were struck by a car that left the road and slid onto a sidewalk after colliding with another vehicle in the northwest valley, Las Vegas police said.

The driver of the car, a 2000 Honda Accord, fled the scene of the crash, which occurred just before 7 p.m. near the intersection of Lake Mead and Jones boulevards, Metropolitan Police Department Sgt. Robert Stauffer said late Saturday.

“He also left his bumper and his license plate here at the scene, and so patrol officers went to the residence and located the vehicle and driver,” Stauffer said. The driver, whose name has not been released, was taken into custody without incident.

A preliminary investigation shows that the Accord was heading east on Lake Mead at the same time as a 2012 Nissan Altima was beginning to make a left turn from northbound Jones to westbound Lake Mead, Stauffer said.

“The vehicle making the left turn, according to witnesses, was doing so on a green arrow signal. The eastbound Honda ran the red light, clipped the Nissan and began to slide sideways down the road about 300 feet when it left the roadway and went onto the sidewalk, where it struck five pedestrians,” he said.

The injured pedestrians were taken to University Medical Center trauma center, where two children, ages 6 and 9, were listed in critical but stable condition, Stauffer said. The conditions of the others weren’t immediately available.

Earlier reports had indicated one person had died, but that information was inaccurate, police said later Saturday.

The fatal detail was on the scene conducting an investigation based on the fact that two of the three children are in critical condition, police said. There are no additional victims and no fatalities confirmed as of late Saturday.

Police had no information Saturday night on whether the driver of the car that struck the pedestrians was intoxicated or otherwise impaired. It is also unclear whether the suspect’s vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed at the time of the crash. The incident is being investigated as a hit-and-run case, and police have some witnesses, Stauffer said.

“We do have at least three witnesses and also two sources of video that we’re looking into right now,” he said.

Answering a reporter’s question, Stauffer said, “Every one of these accidents is different.”

In some cases, the vehicles take the brunt of the accident, he said. ”In this case there was very light contact between the two vehicles, but just enough to cause that unstablized situation, which made that vehicle slide 300 feet down the road and take out some folks that were just standing on the sidewalk minding their own business.”

Review-Journal writer Jessica Terrones contributed to this report. Contact Christian Bertolaccini at cbertolaccini@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Find @bertolaccinic on Twitter.