CHP doesn’t discover body of crash victim until after victim’s mom calls

What appeared to be a routine drunken driving accident when California Highway Patrol officers arrived at the scene along Interstate 680 in Fremont turned out to be anything but that.

After the Oct. 9 crash, officers arrested a man who claimed he was the driver, then left after concluding no one had been seriously injured. But they overlooked one key thing: the body of a man killed in the crash, which wasn’t found until the next day about 100 feet away from the car.

The Highway Patrol never reported the crash and declined to explain why, other than to indicate the event is still under investigation and the real driver has not been arrested.

But on Tuesday the story took another bizarre twist — on social media. In a video posted on Facebook, Fremont resident Tyler Underwood, 31, acknowledged he drove the car that night. He is seen sitting in a chair smoking a cigarette and speaking to the camera.

“It was a vehicle malfunction that caused my accident,” Underwood said inthe video, more than seven minutes long, which was apparently posted to respond to Facebook commentary about the accident. “A tire blew, causing me to lose control of my vehicle,” he said. “Most of y’all want to say I was hammered or drunk, or anything like that, absolutely not.”

Underwood said he had turned himself into authorities. “Yes, I did go talk to the police. Yes, I did tell them the truth. As of what’s going to happen in the future, that’s not to be known,” he said.

He then identifies the man killed in the crash as Darren Walker, saying, “I loved Darren, hewas likemy brother, asmost of you know. But it was an accident.

“I’m here, I’m free as of right now, and we’ll see what happens stepping forward through this whole situation,” he said.

The Highway Patrol would not confirm that Underwood drove the car that night or that it had subsequently talked to him about the accident.

The agency does say it has determined that Walker, 32, was ejected from the back seat of a four- door BMW sedan that crashed while traveling south on Interstate 680 about a mile north of Scott Creek Road in Fremont. The BMW driver apparently was jockeying at high speeds with a friend driving another car on the highway.

The BMW driver apparently lost control, went off the side of the highway and crashed into a grassy, tree-lined embankment.

Inside the car were three passengers: Walker, a 4-year- old girl and another person. The latter two were not seriously hurt, authorities said. The other car’s driver and single passenger pulled to the shoulder to assist.

A nearby resident sawthe wreck and called 911. By the time officers arrived, along with fire trucks and ambulances, the people inside the BMW had climbed back up to the shoulder of the road.

A man who officers determined was under the influence told officers he was the BMW’s driver so they arrested him for DUI, according to Highway Patrol spokesman Officer Tyler Hahn. Alcohol was found in and near the car, he said.

“Theywere drinking, and they admitted to being the driver of that car. And everybody on scene was saying, ‘ Oh, yeah, he was driving,’ ” Hahn said, noting that people from both cars all seemed to know each other. No one mentioned Walker to the officers or the other emergency responders, Hahn said.

“So the driver was arrested, other people were transported for minor injuries, and we thought that the investigation was done,” he said.

But the next day, the Highway Patrol got a call from Walker’s mother reporting that her son had been involved in a crash on that stretch of highway the night before. An officer sent to search the scene of the crash discovered Walker’s body about 100 feet away from where the car had come to rest, Hahn said.

“The coroner came out, and our investigation of what we thought was just a simple DUI collision turned into a collision involving alcohol and a fatality,” Hahn said. “So it’s a pretty sad deal.”

Hahn said he went to the scene himself the following day and was “totally shocked” to see how far away the body had been found from the scene.

“I just wanted to get a sense of it myself. And I can see how everybody that was on the scene would have never thought that somebody was ejected over into this area, especially when they don’t have anybody telling them,” Hahn said.

“If I’m in a car … and one of my friends is in that car, and we’re all in amajor crash, wouldn’t you want to be like, ‘Hey, where’s so and so?’ Not one person brought it up,” Hahn said.

Walker’s family held a visitation service for him Monday evening and buried him the next day.

Investigators later determined the person originally arrested for DUI was actually the passenger in the second car that had stopped on the shoulder. Hahn wouldn’t comment about why the man would lie to officers about being the driver, but said he was released and has not yet been cited.

Hahn said Highway Patrol investigators are reaching out to people who may have witnessed the accident, including those in the cars, but would not offer more detail, saying the investigation is ongoing.

Teresa Gutierrez, the grandmother of the child in the back seat of the BMW, said she believes the man who initially took the blame for the crash is Underwood’s friend.

Underwood is the father of her granddaughter and has been arrested multiple times for drunken driving, she said.

Alameda County court records show a Tyler Underwood has been convicted of four misdemeanor DUI charges since 2008, with sentences including jail time and license suspensions.

The Highway Patrol would not confirm whether Underwood was even present at the scene of the accident, but dispatch archives show a BMW registered in his name needed to be towed from the embankment.

“I just want justice because I couldn’t imagine if my granddaughter was killed,” Gutierrez said.

A number believed to belong to Underwood was unable to receive calls, according to a wireless provider’s recording on the line. No one responded to a message sent to Underwood’s account on Facebook.