Foothills Area
Nov. 14, 5:30 p.m.
A middle-aged man drunkenly—but in an almost robotic manner—drove his car straight into a mass of cacti planted in a stranger's yard, thankfully emerging from the accident unharmed, according to a Pima County Sheriff's Department report.
A sheriff's deputy responded to a late-afternoon call to a quiet north-side neighborhood, where a resident had reported a man sitting in a car in the middle of a residential street—with his car still running, but not having moved for a very long time. The reportee said she'd knocked on the man's window, and he'd looked at her once but made no further response.
Approaching the vehicle, the deputy could see the man sitting in the driver's seat, quite awake but in his own world, staring straight ahead. When the deputy talked to him through his window, he glanced up briefly but then immediately turned back to the front windshield.
Then things got real—apparently the subject had previously been pressing down on the car's brake with his foot, but at that moment he let off the pedal ... causing the vehicle to start rolling forward. The deputy yelled at him repeatedly to stop, but it was too late: The car had gained momentum and was now barreling toward someone's yard.
Luckily, that yard was thick with desert flora, and the car didn't have far to go before it collided with a collection of cacti.
The man escaped the car unharmed (but having peed his pants, understandably) and was taken to the hospital by paramedics.
