DEADLY CRASH WITNESS: ‘He drove his car like 100 mph so he could kill them’

There are more questions than answers following two people being run over by the driver of a sport utility vehicle in Las Cruces.

At around 4 a.m. Sunday, police were called to the intersection of Valley View Avenue and Winters Street on a report of a crash involving a vehicle and two pedestrians. When officers arrived, they found a 28-year-old woman and 36-year-old man dead at the scene.

One woman said she saw the driver and the man and woman shouting at each other just before the crash.

“I went inside to call the police because they were fighting right there,” the woman said.

The woman did not want to be identified.

“When I got out, the truck was already here and the two bodies were there. He ran over two people. He was very mad. He drove his car like 100 mph so he could kill them,” the woman said.

The news was heartbreaking for the Mata sisters. The man killed was their stepfather.

“I live in Oklahoma City and when I got the news we drove straight over here,” Vivian Mata said.

A makeshift memorial marks the spot in the Las Cruces neighborhood where the man and woman were killed.

Las Cruces police say the driver, identified only as a 50-year-old man, had been in an argument with several people at a nearby house. But officials did not confirm the crash was intentional.

“We have to take into account the conditions, the road, the vehicle and every single piece of evidence from there and we have to map it,” LCPD spokesperson Dan Trujillo said.

The Mata sisters said other members of their stepfather’s family told them the argument began after the driver of the SUV was asked to leave a party.

While police try to piece together exactly what happened, the sisters are left dealing with the sudden loss.

“Walking to the shrine, I didn’t think it would hit me as hard. But when I saw it, all the memories of him and being with him came to me and it’s just really hard,” Mata said.

Police said after striking the two pedestrians, the driver crashed, into a rock wall nearby. The driver was airlifted to University Medical Center in El Paso. His condition is unknown at this time.

ABC-7 will update this article with more information as it comes in.