Utah Teenager Who Crashed Car Into Home Is Charged With Murder

Make adult decisions, face adult consequences.

We remember a time when most teenagers were more concerned with going to the mall with their friends or which girl they were going to ask out to the dance, not how to ditch the cops after stealing a car. But a 15-year-old boy in West Valley City, Utah was in just that situation when he lost control of the stolen vehicle and crashed into a house, killing a man. Now he’s facing murder charges.

Go back to a simpler time when teenagers were happier.

The victim, 24-year-old Adrian Rodriguez, was checking on his elderly neighbor when tragedy struck. As reported by ABC4 Utah, Rodriguez was killed instantly when the teenager in the stolen car slammed into him. This happened back in May, but recently the juvenile was charged in court with murder as well as theft of a vehicle as well as failing to respond to an officer’s signal to stop.

According to a report from KSL back in May, the elderly woman Rodriguez was helping had been handing some food over to the young man when the car hit him. A son of the elderly woman said the neighbor was helping his mother constantly, even giving her rides to church.

It’s not lost on us the irony of a young man trying to be helpful to someone in need being killed by another young man who was only thinking of himself. Life is often unfair and this case is a horrible example of that.

We searched for images or a description of the stolen car but couldn’t find any. With how often kids steal Kias and Hyundais these days, we wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was one or the other.

The house was condemned thanks to the extensive structural damage done by the car crash. That’s probably for the best, because the elderly woman who lived there probably couldn’t stand to relive the incident repeatedly. She was hospitalized with high blood pressure after witnessing her neighbor get brutally mowed down.