Updated at 12:20 p.m. May 30, 2016
The driver of a truck that collided with a Carlsbad Police car could face a felony DUI charge, a California Highway Patrol spokesman said Monday.
Forty-one-year-old Juvenal Gonzalez of Vista was hospitalized at Scripps Memorial in San Diego after suffering head injuries in the collision on Sunday, the CHP’s Jim Bettencourt said.
A passenger in the Ford F-150 truck, identified only as a 41-year-old Encinitas resident, suffered minor-to-moderate injuries and was also taken to Scripps Memorial, Bettencourt said.
Two unidentified Carlsbad police officers were treated at Scripps Hospital in Encinitas for minor injuries and later released, according to Lt. Jeff Chapman of the Carlsbad Police Department’s Patrol Division.
A test found Gonzalez to be under the influence, Bettencourt said, adding that the CHP recommended that Gonzalez be charged with felony DUI upon his release from the hospital.
The collision happened shortly after 7 p.m. Sunday at the intersection of Poinsettia Lane and El Fuerte Street in Carlsbad, Chapman said.
According to the CHP, Gonzalez was driving east on Poinsettia Lane and failed to stop for a red light. The truck then collided with a Carlsbad Police Department vehicle and overturned.
When other officers arrived on scene, they found the patrol car with extensive front-end damage, along with the truck lying on its side east of the intersection, Chapman said.
—City News Service