Police cite driver in Cobb hit-and-run

Someone has claimed responsibility for the hit-and-run outside Cobb Residence Hall early Wednesday morning.

Yasser Salim, 23, of Durham, turned himself in to police on Wednesday at 5:20 p.m. as the driver of the car that caused the accident. The crash occurred at 1:26 a.m. Wednesday morning in the parking lot outside Cobb.

Salim received a citation for failing to remain at the scene of the crash. He was released after he was cited.

Salim was driving a 2005 Suzuki and hit a parked 2003 Nissan, which belonged to Cobb resident Cain Twyman, a reporter for The Daily Tar Heel. The Nissan was pushed into a light pole, causing the light to go out.

Salim initially told The Daily Tar Heel he was a bystander and claimed that he ran up to the driver of the car responsible for the accident to see if he was hurt. Salim claimed to have seen the driver leave the scene as he was walking down Country Club Road.

“I was just terrified when I was at the scene so I made up stories. I was just so scared and there were lots of people asking me questions,” Salim said. “Honestly, I don’t remember much of what happened.”

The crash report initially misidentified Salim as the owner of the car that was hit, not the driver of the car responsible for the crash.

Randy Young, spokesman for the UNC Department of Public Safety, said a clerical error caused the vehicles and owners to be recorded incorrectly in the crash report.

“I think they were able to ascertain the owner of the car some other way since he did not claim responsibility that night, but he obviously did not leave the scene if The Daily Tar Heel spoke to him,” Young said.

When DPS arrived, the car responsible for the accident was abandoned and still running. Salim said he got scared and left the scene on foot, walking for hours back to his home in Durham.

“We heard what sounded like a million aluminum cans being thrown in a dumpster and then the lights went out, and we saw blinking red lights of the cars,” said Valerie Davis, who saw the crash outside of a window in Cobb.

Davis said she searched the cars and the surrounding area to see if anyone was hurt.

“The car that got hit was much worse off,” Davis said. “The back left corner was inverted, smushed, all the way up to the front passenger seat. The light pole went in about a foot and a half to the front of the car. The airbags of the car that was still running had been deployed, but the cage of the car wasn’t affected.”

The parked car sustained $7,000 in damages and the car that caused the accident sustained $3,000 worth of damages. Salim said he crashed because it was dark and he was eating while driving.

Twyman was asleep at the time of the accident and was woken up by DPS officers knocking on her door.

“The DPS guy said that there wasn’t that much of a car left, and when I went down there it was a lot worse than I thought it was going to be,” Twyman said. “I was really sad. I had to call my sister at 2 in the morning to tell her what happened."

Salim’s court date is set for April 21 in Chapel Hill.

university@dailytarheel.com