PHOENIX β A woman and her daughter are thankful to be alive after a crash involving a red-light runner who nearly struck a couple pushing a stroller across a busy west Phoenix intersection.
Traffic video released Wednesday by Phoenix police shows a car driven by Shannon Vivar making a right turn and unintentionally knocking a speeding vehicle out of the way just seconds before it likely would have mowed down a man, his wife and their 1-year-old son.
The family was crossing the street to get to a grocery store after exiting a bus. They escaped injury.
"I don't really think I'm a hero. I kind of think it was meant to happen," Vivar, 27, said at a news conference Thursday.
Vivar suffered minor injuries in the crash. Her mother, Shirley, also was in the car at the time along with her daughter's 3-year-old son.
"I yelled, 'Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, Shannon!' And then we collided," Shirley Vivar said. "It was the wrong time at the wrong place, but then the right time at the right place. We're all blessed that we're all alive."
"In this case, when you look at the video, it's nothing short of a miracle that the family the (Jeep) Renegade was barreling toward didn't get struck," said Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a police spokesman. "They could have suffered injuries that were certainly serious if not life threatening."
Police said Ernesto Otanez Oveso, 28, was driving impaired when he ran that red light in the late-night hours of Oct. 14 and then drove off after the crash with Vivar's vehicle.
Police say he later pulled a knife on another driver, who was a witness to the crash and followed Oveso from the scene.
Police said Oveso remains jailed on suspicion of leaving the scene of a collision and aggravated assault along with a weapons violation, a felony warrant in a probation violation and three misdemeanor warrants.
A handgun was later found in Oveso's vehicle and he's prohibited from possessing a firearm, according to police, who didn't immediately know if Oveso has a lawyer yet.
