CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — One man is trying to figure out what comes next after an 80-year-old man drove a pickup truck through his garage -- while he was working inside.
The crash happened Thursday evening on the 4500 block of Prescott Street and resulted in the garage catching fire with the elderly man losing his life.
Frank Rodriguez was outside making T-shirts when the crash happened. Corpus Christi Police Department officers said the elderly man was driving down Gollihar Road near Prescott Street when he lost control of his vehicle, went through a fence, a backyard, and a second fence before ending up in Rodriguez's garage.
Police said a medical issue may have been the cause of the crash.
“It was out of nowhere,” he said. “The car just came and hit me.”
Rodriguez lives off the busy intersection when the pickup drove through his neighbor's fence. But it didn't stop there.
"Came straight and crashed into the garage, and it hit me, and threw me from one side of the garage to the other," he said.
The garage caught fire after the crash, and even though Rodriguez was hurt his first thought wasn't to flee. It was to help.
"I tried to get him out, but I couldn't,” he said. “It was just too much flames and smoke."
Rodriguez escaped the accident with minor injuries, but says he knows that there are others affected who will need to heal in different ways.
"Sorry for the family of the gentleman who was in that car, or truck,” he said. “I did everything I could."
He said that he's still trying to figure out what happens next.
"I lost everything,” he said. “My business is in the garage."
But in the end, he knows that there are something that can never be replaced.
"I mean, it's killing me, I couldn't help the guy,” he said, welling up.