USC’s Alijah Arenas recounts harrowing escape from Cybertruck

When Alijah Arenas opened her eyes, a few minutes after her Tesla Cybertruck hit a tree one morning last April, the five -star catworth high phenomenon was not sure where he was or how he went there. His initial and disoriented thought was that he woke up at home. But as he regained consciousness, Arena felt the seat belt wrapped closely around her waist. He noticed the LIFE360 application on his phone, BIP. Outside the car, he could hear brassacons, like a campfire.

Then he felt the warmth like a sauna rose to his highest adjustment. The passenger side of the dashboard, the arenas could see, was already engulfed by flames. The smoke filled the car’s cabin before the car. He could no longer see through the windows.

Arenas has reached its iPhone, determined to use its digital key to escape, only to find that the Tesla application had locked it. Panic began to settle.

“I tried to open the door,” said Arenas, “and the door does not open.”

A Tela Cybertruck crumbled rests next to a tree following an accident involving the best Alijah arenas of the USC basketball.

(Handout)

He torn off his seat belt and moved to the rear seat, far from the smoke, desperately scanning the car for an exit strategy. His heart was beating. The heat became unbearable. Then he passed out.

No more than 10 minutes earlier – and less than two miles at the top of avenue Corbin – Arenas had just finished a training before dawn in Dstrkt, a catworthy gymnasium, where he had progressed up to 10,000 shots that week.

One of the best prospects for hoops in Southern California, Arenas was far from obtaining her catworth high graduate after three years with the intention of joining the USC a year earlier in 2025. He did everything he could to prepare for this extraordinary jump.

He was entering the gymnasium, leading south to Corbin as he had done so many times before, when Arenas noticed that the Cybertruck – who is recorded to his father, the former NBA star, Gilbert Arenas – acted strangely. The car did not read that he had left the gymnasium. The keyboard continued to vacillate and extinguish.

After stopping on a red light, he tried to change track, only to notice that “the wheel did not move as easily as it should”. Drifting in the right track, he realized that he “could not return to the left”.

“So a car comes to me, and I think I’m just going to stop,” he said. “So I accelerate to stop to the right in a neighborhood because there are cars parked in the street, I am on the right. But when I accelerate to turn, I cannot stop. The wheel did not answer me – as if I was not in the car.”

The cybertruck rather hid in a fire mouth, then a tree, before making flames.

The minutes looked like hours as he was trying to escape the brooding car. By deriving in and out of conscience, Arenas did everything he could to remain alert. He bit his lip as loud as possible and hugged his nails in his skin. He was elegant with water from a bottle of water to cool his body. He tried to make as much noise as possible, shouting and hitting the glass. But the flames became warmer, the smoke became thicker.

“I panic,” said Arenas. “I was fighting time.”

He began to break a window, knowing that Cybertruck windows are supposed to be “unbreakable”. When his hands hurt the glass, he started using his feet. Then he vanished again.

The first year of the USC Alijah Arenas, which survived a Cybertruck accident earlier this year, talks to journalists on Tuesday.

(Ryan Kartje / Los Angeles Times)

When he woke up, “I realized that my whole right side had taken fire,” he said.

But while tearing his clothes and was done again in the water, he heard a thud outside the car window. Sirens groaned away. Keep uphe said.

He kicked the driver’s side window with everything he had. Finally, he spotted a crack. He continued to kick, briefly deriving outside the conscience, before the window falls and the hands begin to pull it from the vehicle with his legs.

The next thing he remembers was a cold rush, as if he had jumped in an icy river. A video of the crash scene obtained by TMZ shows elongated arenas on the ground in the street in a few centimeters of water, while the broken mouth continues to spray in the air, after a group of good Samaritans came to its rescue.

In all, Arenas spent at least 10 minutes in the car on fire before the people who heard the accident ends up putting it in safety. It is not lost for him how lucky he was.

“There are incredible people in this world who are ready to help and risk their own body for you,” said Arenas. “For me, it was like, I never want to think Me Never again. “”

Alijah Arenas, from Chatsworth High, goes to the basket.

(Nick Koza)

The following hours and days are still blurred for the arenas, which were taken to a neighboring hospital, then another. It was placed in a medically induced coma, a common approach to cope with the inhalation of extreme smoke.

When he finally woke up, Arenas still couldn’t speak. But immediately, panic has settled. He wondered if his car had struck another, or if someone else had been injured.

Months later, he still cannot resolve to blame what happened elsewhere. Even if there is no indication that the arenas were at fault for its steering wheel locking.

“Honestly, I take full responsibility,” said Arenas. “Whether it is me, another car, a dysfunction. I really don’t want to put anyone else in this situation – anyone who has done the car, anything. I want to take full responsibility for what I do. If I would have injured someone, it would really have wreaked havoc on me.”

The Arenas spent six days in hospital after the accident, but have not undergone any significant long -term injury. In the weeks that followed, he made walks in the family district to regain his strength. Along the way, the neighbors doubled it with flowers and good wishes. Last month, the family welcomed the men who saved arenas in their house to share their gratitude.

He always works to join the USC for his summer hoop practices, with a preliminary class work remaining before the end of his transition. But after having officially registered at the USC last week, Arenas was held on the line of the training court on Tuesday morning, teammates up to the height and shouting missions, looking at the whole role of a five -star first -year student who is ready to intervene from the first day.

“His point of view is really unique,” said USC coach Eric Musselman. “Before the accident, when you speak to Alijah, it is a unique reflection process on how he considers life and the basketball game and how he considers his teammates.”

But there is no harm to be mistaken, in the minds of the Arenas, how lucky he is to have survived – and how many things had to do well for this to be the case. He is convinced that he was spared to help someone else in the same way he was helped.

“It taught me a lot,” said Arenas. “I am very lucky – and not even to be here. Just in general, in life. “