MESA, Ariz. — Sebastian Ibañez feels thankful to be alive after a car slammed into a traffic light pole eight feet from where he was standing on Christmas Eve in Mesa.
Ibañez is blind and partially deaf. He was selling brooms, mops, and blankets at the corner of Mesa Drive and McKellips Roads when his “bad day” turned into a life lesson.
He was standing next to his table filled with perfectly aligned blankets when he heard a loud noise. He quickly realized it was two cars that had crashed at the intersection near the sidewalk where he was standing.
“All I could do was tense up," Ibañez said. “I knew the car was coming close and I had no way of knowing how close it was going to be.”
Ibañez said he stood still, hoping none of the vehicles hurt him. He thought running or moving would hurt his chances.
“Unbeknownst to me, the car hit eight feet away from where I was, two feet away from my table and brooms,” the street vendor, who is also a car salesman, said. “I had to move the bumper away from the dolly where my brooms are, then it dawned on me, ‘Wow, I could have been killed.”
The crash happened on Christmas Eve, usually a day when Ibañez sells out his product and makes roughly $1,000 a day.
But by 6 p.m., he had only sold about $300 worth of merchandise. He hoped to sell more, to cover the expenses he incurred during the holidays, so he decided to stay for two more hours.
While he stood there, Ibañez said he felt sad and depressed that business “was not great,” then the crash happened.
“I thought I was having a bad day and then God showed me what a bad day could look like, what a bad day could have been,” he said. “I could have been standing there.”
Ibañez said he normally leaned against the pole the car crashed into, but since the temperatures were low, the pole was cold, so he stood on the opposite end of the table.
He felt lucky not to have been standing there.
“I was happy, not that I was going home with $300, but that I was going home period,” Ibañez said.
Mesa Police told 12News the collision involved two vehicles, with one person suffering minor injuries.
This crash is not the first time the street vendor has had a close call. In 2019, a truck backed up on Ibañez as he walked to the gas station at the same intersection where he has been selling products for eight years.
Thankfully he wasn’t hurt.
Ibañez now wants to share a message that there’s no bad day when you get a chance to live another day.
“Hug your loved ones, kiss your children, you never know when the last day is going to be,” he said.
Ibañez said he'll continue to sell merchandise at that same intersection. Anyone interested in buying products from him can find him at Mesa Drive and McKellips Road, or call him at (480) 238-6171.
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