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What greeted him was total devastation.
“I figured something happened in the street and I come out to see my entire backyard destroyed,” Reed told FOX 5 Las Vegas.¹ “I mean everything was just blown up. The patio is on the ground, the lady is floating in my pool.”
Security cameras revealed the horrifying truth.
A white vehicle slammed through Reed’s concrete block wall at high speed, went airborne, and flipped violently through the air before crashing into his pool house.
The impact was so severe that the driver was ejected from the vehicle and thrown directly into Reed’s swimming pool.
Police say the driver had been speeding before failing to stop, striking the wall and sending the car “rotating in the air” before ejecting her into the water.¹
A Near Fatal Landing Measured In Feet
Reed found the woman floating face down in his pool as debris rained down around him.
“She kept floating face up, she flipped over face down, she snuck under water,” Reed recalled.¹ “She was conscious, but she was moaning and groaning.”
The woman landed in the shallow end of the pool, which Reed says is only waist deep and surrounded by concrete.
That detail likely saved her life.
“She ended up right in the shallow end,” Reed explained.¹ “If she went 4 feet that way, and concrete — and you know the end result of that. She was blessed, and I was blessed.”
Just four feet in any direction and the outcome would have been fatal.
Instead, the driver survived.
Fifteen minutes after being pulled from the pool, she was standing and speaking with officers before being transported to a hospital in Arizona.
Records show she already has prior traffic violations.
Police have not yet announced what charges she may face.
A Decision That Saved A Life
What makes this story truly terrifying is how close Reed himself came to being killed.
Moments before the crash, he was preparing to step into his hot tub.
The cover had already been removed.
Then something made him pause.
“I popped the cover on and I was like, you know, I gotta tell my wife something,” Reed said.¹ “And by the grace of God I’m here and the patio goes bam. I would have been dead. It would have killed me.”
The hot tub sits exactly where the wall collapsed.
If Reed had stepped in just seconds earlier, he would have been crushed by concrete and wreckage.
Instead, he watched everything he built disappear.
A Lifetime Of Savings Destroyed In Seconds
Reed spent his retirement savings creating a backyard oasis for his family.
The resort style pool holds 25,000 gallons of water.
Now it is contaminated with motor oil.
His patio is gone.
The wall is destroyed.
He estimates the damage will cost nearly $300,000 to repair.
The pool may need to be completely drained and rebuilt.
The vehicle was wedged so deeply into the property that a crane was required to remove it.
“I can’t really sleep well because I keep running it through my head again,” Reed said.¹
While Reed deals with sleepless nights and financial devastation, the driver walked away alive.
Nevada’s Growing DUI Disaster
Police suspect impairment played a role in the crash.
If so, this incident is not an anomaly.
Nevada has become a hot spot for impaired driving fatalities.
Between 2018 and 2022, the state recorded 790 DUI related deaths, averaging 158 lives lost every year.
Impaired driving accounts for roughly 30 to 35 percent of all traffic deaths in Nevada, far above the national average of 28 percent.²
In 2023, Nevada law enforcement reported 560 DUI arrests and conducted 1,204 field sobriety tests.³
That marks a 28 percent increase compared to 2020.³
But those numbers barely scratch the surface.
Nationwide, drunk drivers get behind the wheel an estimated 121 million times per year.⁴
Only about 1 percent are ever arrested.⁴
Studies show the average drunk driver has driven impaired roughly 80 times before their first arrest.⁴
A System That Failed Before The Crash
That means the driver who nearly killed Reed likely had countless opportunities to stop.
She did not.
The system knew she had prior violations.
She was allowed to keep driving anyway.
Reed did everything right.
He followed the law.
He paid his taxes.
He built a peaceful retirement.
One reckless decision by an impaired driver destroyed it all in seconds.
And that is what should terrify every American.
