CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — EDITOR'S NOTE: The crash video in this story may be difficult for some to watch.
James Soliz was driving down Holly Road on Saturday night when he saw headlights approaching him.
"My first instinct was to just tell them so I held down the horn," he said. "Of course slammed the brakes, so less speed. I tried to get out of the way."
He wasn't able to, and the driver of a dark pickup truck hit him head-on near Rodd Field Road.
"That impact definitely, that hurt," he said. "Yeah. Especially with all the air bags. I got punched in the face, punched in the side, my ear was ringing, it was like, it took me out."
Luckily for Soliz, his vehicle was equipped with a dashcam, which gives Corpus Christi Police Department officers a solid starting point.
"It's not very typical that you will get video, dashcam video from a victim vehicle showing a crash," said CCPD Public Information Lt. Michael Pena.
Police can now use that video to try and track down the truck's driver, who according to the dashcam video, quickly left the scene after crashing into Soliz.
"This will definitely go a long ways in helping us locate that offender," Pena said.
The encounter with the alleged wrong-way driver left Soliz's spine fractured and his vehicle heavily damaged.
"The whole impact just shook me up and it just, 'pssshed', it made a big old gash wound right here," he said. "So I thought it might be fractured or broken but luckily it's not. It's just going to take time to heal."
Witnesses told Soliz's family the black pickup truck was seen swerving before the accident on a different street.
Pena encourages anyone with information on the crash to call the CCPD hit-and-run section or to call CrimeStoppers.
Soliz hopes police find the other driver to prevent this from happening to someone else.