(Reuters) – The man who drove an 18-wheel truck with a loaded flatbed into a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) building last week, killing one person and injuring more than a dozen others, faces multiple charges and a $2 million bond, jail records showed on Monday.
Clenard Parker, 42, is charged with evading arrest, unauthorized use of a vehicle, and three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to the inmate roster of the Washington County Jail in Brenham, Texas, where Parker is currently held.
A county judge in neighboring Montgomery County said in a Facebook post on Friday that Parker committed the act intentionally, after he was denied a commercial driver’s license at that DPS office the day before.
“He returned today with intent to harm,” wrote the judge, Mark Keough, in the post on Friday.
Parker had stolen the truck and was being pursued by authorities when he crashed it into the building around 11 a.m. CT on Friday morning, the DPS said at a press conference on Friday afternoon.
Images of the aftermath showed a tractor-trailer with a crushed cab in the parking lot of the DPS building in Brenham, about 75 miles northwest of Houston. A wall of the brick building was smashed in and debris was strewn about the area.
In addition to the motor vehicle agency, the DPS includes the Texas Rangers police force, which are leading the investigation into the incident, according to a DPS post on X.
The crash resulted in 13 injuries in addition to the one fatality, the DPS said at Friday’s press conference.
Parker was arrested at the scene, uninjured, by several officers who pulled him from the truck’s cab.
It was unclear as of Monday if Parker had an attorney representing him.
(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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