On Saturday, February 18th, 2023, at 11:20 pm, the Turlock Police Department was dispatched to a reported hit-and-run vehicle collision that had just occurred in the 400 block of Vassar Ave, Turlock, where a pickup truck had left the roadway, drove up onto a lawn, and struck the front of a residence before fleeing the scene.
While officers were responding, the suspect vehicle description and its last known direction of travel were aired over the police radio. An uninvolved person at the intersection of Geer Rd and E Canal Dr listening to the police scanner spotted the suspect vehicle and began following it, calling dispatch and providing location updates.
The vehicle eventually pulled into an apartment complex in the 1500 block of Lander Ave and that information was relayed to responding officers. Officers arrived a few minutes later and found the vehicle in the back of the apartment complex after it had been involved in a second very low-speed rear-end type collision with a parked vehicle. Standing next to the vehicle were Jorge Vasquez, 19, of Turlock, and his female passenger. Vasquez was urinating.
Officers contacted the two and noticed that Vasquez was displaying objective symptoms of being under the influence. Vasquez became belligerent, so he was detained in handcuffs and placed in the back of a patrol vehicle.
Vasquez was given the opportunity to blow into a preliminary alcohol screening device and participate in a standardized field sobriety test. He blew extremely high and performed poorly on the test.
Based on the totality of the circumstances, officers determined that Vasquez was under the influence of alcohol.
Vasquez was arrested and provided two evidentiary breath samples at the scene as required by California’s implied consent law. The breath samples revealed that Vasquez had a blood alcohol content of .08% or greater.
During the first collision into the residence, Vasquez’s passenger suffered a minor non-life-threatening injury to her head. Neither Vasquez nor the people inside the residence suffered any injuries and both Vasquez’s vehicle and the residence sustained minor damage.
During the second collision into the parked vehicle, neither Vasquez nor his passenger suffered any injuries and the parked vehicle was unoccupied. Both Vasquez’s vehicle and the parked vehicle sustained minor damage.
Vasquez was transported to a local hospital where he was medically cleared. Afterward, he was booked into the Stanislaus County Public Safety Center on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol causing bodily injury to another person, driving with a blood alcohol content of .08% or greater causing bodily injury to another person, and fleeing the scene of an accident resulting in injury or death to another person. He was also issued an administrative driver’s license suspension order by the California Department of Motor Vehicles and his vehicle was impounded.
