A white Chevy Silverado swerved around a car illegally parked in a red zone, plowed into a neighborhood pupusa stand, and injured two pedestrians before backing up and speeding away in East Palo Alto on Monday afternoon. The truck's driver has still not been identified, even after police used automated license plate readers to determine the vehicle's direction and Fremont officers pulled it over on Interstate 880.
Cameras Led Police From East Palo Alto to a Fremont Stop
The crash happened around 2:30 p.m. Monday, according to NBC Bay Area, when the truck turned from East Bayshore Road onto Euclid Avenue and struck the food stand, which had sold pupusas as a well-liked fixture in the neighborhood for several years. Surveillance video captured the truck making that turn, and a witness handed police a photo of the vehicle along with its license plate. East Palo Alto police then used Flock license plate reader cameras to determine which direction the truck had fled, according to the station's report.
That electronic trail led investigators to Fremont, where officers stopped the truck on I-880. The registered owner was arrested, but not for the crash itself — the arrest was for an unrelated weapons charge, per the same NBC Bay Area account. The owner denied driving the truck at the time of the collision, leaving open the question of who was actually behind the wheel when it struck the pedestrians and the pupusa stand. Police said the identities and conditions of the two injured people were not known as of the report.
A Blind Turn and a Red-Zone Car
The Euclid Avenue turn where the crash occurred is a blind one, and a parking enforcement officer told NBC Bay Area that a car parked in the red zone forced the truck to swerve around it just before impact. That same official acknowledged the city also bore some responsibility for not enforcing the red zone earlier, and East Palo Alto parking enforcement has since told drivers not to park there. City teams have increased enforcement at red zones in the area since the crash, and red-zone violations elsewhere in the city can result in a citation or a tow.
The crash lands squarely within a pattern local officials have been tracking for months. An analysis of 346 vehicle collisions in East Palo Alto between January 2024 and June 2025 found that hit-and-runs made up 53% of all traffic crashes in the city — 184 incidents, including 55 felony hit-and-runs — according to the East Palo Alto Sun. Illegal red-curb parking has also been a persistent problem: in March 2025 alone, city police issued 1,882 parking citations, including 191 specifically for red-curb violations, per the City of East Palo Alto.
City Had Already Moved to Tighten Enforcement
East Palo Alto launched expanded parking enforcement with LAZ Parking beginning in April 2026, targeting red zones and blocked driveways, according to the city. The crash occurred along the East Bayshore Road corridor near Euclid Avenue. The article also discusses food vendors along city streets.
The Flock cameras that helped trace the fleeing truck have drawn their own local controversy. The East Palo Alto Police Department operates 25 of the automated license plate reader cameras, which store scan data for 30 days, according to the Atlas of Surveillance. The city council voted in April 2026 to uphold its Flock Safety contract despite public pushback over privacy and potential federal data sharing, as reported by SFGATE. Nearby, Stanford University took the opposite approach, terminating its Flock Safety contract in August 2026 and switching to a closed-loop system, joining Mountain View among Bay Area institutions that have dropped the technology over data concerns, according to San José Spotlight.
What Comes Next Under State Hit-and-Run Law
Whoever was driving the truck has not been identified. Under California Vehicle Code Section 20001, leaving the scene of an injury crash is a wobbler offense that prosecutors can charge as either a felony or misdemeanor, according to the Goldstein Law Group. The consequences can vary depending on the circumstances of the case.
For now, East Palo Alto police are asking anyone with information about the crash to come forward, while the question of who was actually driving the Chevy Silverado remains unresolved. The registered owner's denial has left investigators still working to pin down criminal liability even after the vehicle itself was later tracked down.
