Five car crash victims wait nearly 3 hours for police to arrive

DETROIT (WJBK) - A few people involved in a multi-vehicle crash on Saturday afternoon at the corner of Telegraph and Grand River are upset after it took officers a few hours to arrive on scene.

A 17-year-old driving an SUV shortly before 3 p.m. rear-ended a woman in her Lexus and sideswiped a man in his Saturn.

The teen and his guardian didn't have anything to say to FOX 2 or the people involved in the multi-vehicle crash.

They only spoke with Detroit officers who arrived on scene, and police didn't arrive on scene until after 6 p.m.

"The officer said that he apologized and he said unfortunately it is a shortage of vehicles and the priorities and because they have a lack of the help they need, unfortunately (there) was no car to send out," said Dariel Powell, whose sister was involved in the crash.

The spokesperson for Detroit police says the department was responding to between three to five other calls that were more urgent at this time of this report.

However, the spokesperson couldn't specify if the calls involved violent crimes or more serious crashes.

In the end, this one fell onto a lower priority list since no one here was seriously injured, and the spokesperson says he doesn't know of any shortage of squad vehicles.

But Powell says had officers arrived here at the scene sooner, they may have been able to prevent a second crash at the same location.

"Because an hour later, someone else hit somebody else. It's an 18-wheeler involved. It's another gentleman's car involved and ... if the police had been here on time, that accident could have been prevented," she said.

During the three-hour wait period, the people involved in the crash say EMS and officers from another jurisdiction arrived to check on everyone.

Powell's sister Paulyette Evans was driving the Lexus.

Although this may not have been a life and death situation, she doesn't accept waiting several hours after police had been called.

This is someone who currently lives in the suburbs, and is considering moving back into city, but unfortunately she is now rethinking that idea.

"I had my heart set on moving back into the Detroit area, into the Sherwood Forrest, Palmer Woods area, but if this is the kind of service we get with the expensive tax dollars paid here in the city, perhaps I need to rethink my decision," Evans said.