911 Callers Reported the Driver. 30 Minutes Later, 5 Were Dead

At least five people were killed in a horrific crash a few miles north of Kalamazoo, Mich., Tuesday evening when a pickup truck plowed into a group of cyclists. At least four others were seriously injured in the Cooper Township crash, which involved a group of people that goes on weekly bike rides, the Detroit Free Press reports. The pickup driver, identified only as a 50-year-old man from western Michigan, left his wrecked vehicle and took off on foot after the crash but was taken into custody near the scene, WOOD TV8 reports. Witnesses say he had been driving erratically.

Markus Eberhard says he had been fishing in the area when "someone, I don't know who, told me [to] watch out and I jumped back. The truck went past my foot—almost hit my foot, and I looked, and before I could tell the bikers to move, it was too late," he says. "I already heard a bunch of bikes hit his front end." Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeffrey Getting says that 30 minutes before the crash, authorities received calls about the pickup from people with concerns "about the manner in which that vehicle was being driven," the AP reports. (More Michigan stories.)