The collision Saturday was caught on Reeves’s digicam, and the startling footage of an SUV barreling towards the podcast recording went viral on social media. Reeves, who can be a photographer, mentioned he’s discovered a silver lining within the public response to his nearly lethal expertise.
“It’s fairly uncommon that I get some loopy publicity,” he joked in an interview. “I’ve all the time felt just like the algorithm was working towards me, however I suppose it simply wasn’t as thrilling as getting hit by a automotive.”
Reeves, a 20-year-old Houston native, grew up eager to make movies. In February, he began a video podcast collection spotlighting younger artists across the Houston space. For his fifth episode, he organized an interview with Reyes, a 22-year-old fellow photographer, and looked for a recording location that might give the pair a pleasant backdrop to movie in entrance of. He selected the Tout Suite cafe in downtown Houston and grabbed a desk by the store’s tall, street-facing home windows.
“I may movie there and get some visitors within the background that might hopefully, cinematically look cool with the way in which I had it framed,” Reeves mentioned. “I suppose I simply actually framed it up a bit too good.”
Reeves and Reyes spoke for round an hour about pictures and social media. They had been about to finish the video when the SUV swerved into view — completely centered in Reyes’s digicam shot and framed by the window panes behind him — and skidded via an uncontrolled flip. Reeves and Reyes, dealing with away from the road, had been oblivious because the automobile approached. It plowed into the window behind them.
“I felt like I used to be in shock,” Reyes mentioned. “… I simply flip and see a automotive on me.”
The driving force of the black SUV was ticketed for operating a pink gentle, a Houston police spokesperson mentioned. No accidents had been reported.
Reeves and Reyes realized they caught the whole incident on digicam and watched it that night. Reeves’s video reveals the SUV pace via an intersection and seem to collide with a white automobile that had a inexperienced gentle, throwing it into the uncontrolled swerve.
It felt so surreal, Reyes may solely chortle. They clipped the footage and uploaded it to their social media accounts. The views shortly adopted. Reeves mentioned that by Wednesday, he’d gained tons of of recent subscribers on YouTube.
“Folks like to see fail compilations, they like to see automotive crash compilations,” Reeves mentioned. “… I’m fairly certain that is the primary time a automotive has crashed right into a podcast set. So I positively suppose it being the primary one, and simply how loopy it was for all of this to line up, positively warrants the response it’s getting.”
Elyssa Villa, the motive force of the white SUV that the black one hit, additionally took to social media after the crash. The collision totaled her automotive, she instructed The Washington Publish. Worse nonetheless, it was her first expertise being in a automotive wreck — and although police assured her she wasn’t at fault, it was enjoying everywhere in the web, which she lamented in a TikTok video.
“I used to be shocked,” mentioned Villa, 21. “I used to be like, wow, what are the chances for them to be recording and be capable to seize that complete incident?”
Reeves, Reyes and Villa are all nonetheless grappling with what occurred. Although none of them was severely injured, Villa worries she’s aggravated a again damage and has began a fundraiser to assist her purchase a brand new automotive. Reeves and Reyes are shaken, however they’ve been checking in with one another ever since. They each mentioned they’re looking for a optimistic takeaway from the expertise. It’s a minimum of given them one thing new to speak about.
“On the finish of the day, I received a clip that’s one in a billion,” Reeves mentioned. “And I hope that individuals, you already know, additionally watch and simply don’t run pink lights.”
Reeves and Reyes are planning a follow-up episode. They’ll meet up on Saturday, they mentioned, to file one other podcast reflecting on the expertise. They invited Villa, who agreed to hitch. She’s by no means been on a podcast earlier than, however she mentioned she’s trying ahead to telling her facet of the story — particularly as a result of some commenters on TikTok mistakenly blamed her for the crash.
“I’m making an attempt one thing out of my consolation zone,” Villa mentioned. “In my eyes, it’s for an excellent kind of trigger. All three of us had been in an accident. So a minimum of [we can] make gentle of it.”
Reeves hasn’t picked a location to file the subsequent podcast but, he mentioned, however he’s hoping for a calmer setting.
“Hopefully in the course of a area,” he mentioned. “Someplace far-off from vehicles, trains or another factor that would presumably hit us.”
