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July 08, 2013

Iowa teen hit during a fatal car accident that killed her friend and injured two others, told the other driver to call 911 when he refused she took the keys.

A Council Bluffs teenager who survived a highway collision that killed one of her friends and injured two others said she took the other driver’s keys to prevent him from trying to drive away.

Jessilyn Eisman, 16, said that after a van driving the wrong way on Veterans Memorial Highway struck her friend’s car early Friday, she crawled from the wreckage and yelled at the driver to call 911, but he refused.

Eisman said she then took the man’s keys.

“I wasn’t just going to let someone leave that just killed my friend,” she said.

Eisman, who suffered minor injuries, said she flagged down another driver to call for help.

Her friend, 17-year-old Chrishaun Moten, was in the back seat and was killed in the crash. The other two Council Bluffs teens were hospitalized with injuries. Brenden Kniesly, 18, the driver of the car, was in stable condition at a Council Bluffs hospital Saturday. Philip Moffatt, 17, was seriously injured, but was improving at an Omaha hospital, police said.

Hilberto Velasquez-Ramirez, 31, was arrested on suspicion of homicide by vehicle, two counts of serious injury by vehicle, operating while intoxicated and having no driver’s license or proof of insurance. He remained in the Pottawattamie County Jail on Saturday on $65,000 bail.

Velasquez-Ramirez said in a jail interview that the crash was not his fault. He said through an interpreter that the other driver swerved and caused the crash. Velasquez-Ramirez said he consumed six beers before the crash.

Velasquez-Ramirez, whose last known address was Nashville, Tenn., said he was in Iowa doing roofing work.

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