Victims describe trauma after alleged drunken driver slams into 5 vehicles in Brevard County

There are new details from a crash report involving an alleged drunken driver accused of hitting five other vehicles at about 70 mph.Jessica Rua, 31, is facing several charges, including driving under the influence, crashing into other vehicles, and causing serious injuries. "My dad called me and he was extremely frantic, and he immediately said, 'We're alive, but we just got into a really bad car accident,'" Kiersten Loomis said.Her parents were in one of the five vehicles hit on Feb. 28. She said she immediately rushed to the hospital."There were victims from this accident all throughout this emergency room, trauma center," Loomis said. "We heard someone coding in one room who was from the accident. It was just absolutely traumatizing."A crash report diagram shows how the crash happened. The green Toyota Tacoma, driven by Rua, crashed into a white SUV, then hit a blue car before coming to rest on top of a red car. The white SUV was pushed into two other vehicles in front of it."I saw her flying up the lane, and I knew she was going to hit the SUV next to me. I just braced for what I thought was going to be debris," one driver told us.She did not want to share her name for fear of retaliation because this is still an open criminal and civil case. She said the green truck landed on top of her car."I ended up getting four herniated discs and three bulging discs, and some other stuff," she said.Those injuries are one reason police say it took months to arrest Rua."The suspect in this case went directly to the hospital, so there was a lot of evidence at that time that we couldn't collect," Lt. Graig Erenstoft said. "It took some time. Subpoenas had to be done, and we had to subpoena and request medical records."Those records indicated her blood alcohol concentration at the time of the crash was 0.294 — more than three times Florida's legal limit. Erenstoft said officers also found small bottles of alcohol on Rua."In addition to that, we have many victims," Erenstoft said. "Part of this case is they had pretty severe injuries, so we had to properly document the injuries they had so we knew what charges we'd want to press."Police charged Rua with four counts of driving under the influence causing serious bodily injury, one count of driving under the influence, and one count of driving under the influence causing property damage.For many of the victims and their families, the injuries are still causing problems months later."It's important for everybody to know that this is the aftermath of when people make bad decisions," Loomis said.