Driver charged in crash that killed two

Car went airborne, took out a street light and rolled, ejecting passengers on West Side

A man is accused of smoking cannabis and driving before getting into a rollover crash that left two people dead early Friday morning on Albuquerque’s West Side.

Benjamin Guiang, 20, is charged with two counts of DWI-related vehicular homicide in the crash. Police said Guiang told detectives he had been speeding and smoking cannabis “earlier in the day.”

Franchesca Perdue, an Albuquerque Police Department spokeswoman, said witnesses told police that Guiang may have been racing another car when the crash occurred.

“This is an ongoing investigation,” she said.

Officers responded around 1 a.m. Friday to a crash around Unser and Western Trail NW, near the Petroglyph National Monument, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.

Police found a man and a woman had been ejected from the car, which had gone airborne, taken out a street light and rolled multiple times. The two were pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver, Guiang, was removed from the vehicle and taken to the hospital with “neck and back injuries but nothing deemed life-threatening,” according to the complaint. Another person was alleged to have been ejected from the vehicle but police searched the area and found nobody else before Guiang “discounted” the claim.

Police said a passerby told them Guiang admitted to smoking cannabis before driving, and a witness said other vehicles were street racing Guiang before the crash.

There was no evidence or surveillance footage to back up the claims, according to the complaint.

Police said due to Guiang’s condition, his eyes swollen shut and being in a neck brace, he couldn’t perform sobriety tests. Guiang told police he had smoked cannabis earlier in the day, uses it daily and prefers it to drinking alcohol.

Guiang told police he was speeding south on Unser when he “approached a sharp turn ... lost control of the vehicle and crashed,” according to the complaint.

Perdue, the APD spokeswoman, said Guiang’s car crossed all lanes of traffic, crashed through a street light and “went airborne,” coming to a stop in the center median of Unser.

“A witness on scene stated the (driver) could have possibly been racing a blue Ford Mustang,” Perdue said.

She did not identify those who died or give any other details.