Live blog: crazy shizit in the Mission!

Guys--I'm sitting here in my living room and this white van comes careening down Mission and hits a parked car, then swerves onto Precita, screeching all crazy-loud and hitting something else. Now my roommate--who went down to look--says that practically all the cars on Precita are smashed, that people have been run over, and that he went screeching on down Precita going the wrong way...it's like he's on drugs, or has gone on a murderous rampage!

Holy crap!

PS: Fat lot of good a cop walking the beat would have done in this situation! We need cops in fucking tanks around here, boyyyyyy!

Looks like things have blown over--I'm gonna take a look at the carnage...

UPDATE: Ok, so I went down there to take a look at things for myself. About ten minutes after the initial activity, the first emergency vehicle arrived--a fire truck--and then a bunch of police cars. A whole bunch of people had come out of their houses and apartments to gawk, too.

From what I gathered from witnesses and overhearing the police interview people, the story is this: a young, short Hispanic dude got kicked out of Roca-pulco for general rowdiness. Then he got into a white van--it's not clear whether it was his own--and proceeded to careen down Mission and hit at least one car on that street. While this was happneing, a bunch of dudes came out of the bars--El Rio, Nap's, and Roca--to try to do something to stop him. Apparently after turning onto Precita he wanted to 3-point turn his way back onto Mission, but failed miserably and just kept on ramming a black car over and over. During this time, people on foot were banging on his windows trying to get to him in order to stop him. Eventually he headed down Precita again, away from Mission, hitting several cars--at least five that I saw--along the way. Then he ran into a pole or something down the street and tried to get away on foot, but the police chased him and caught him. His face was bloody and he had a dazed look on his face, like he was very messed up on drugs. Also: he ran over at least one person, who was taken away in an ambulance (but who was conscious--it looked like his leg was f'd up).

A lady who said she's lived on Precita for ten years says that this is about the fifth time that something like this has happened, although she says that usually the drunk driver has come down Precita from the other direction. I doubt those other drivers were as reckless as this one, though.