It's been about two months since five-star basketball phenom Alijah Arenas was badly injured when his Tesla Cybertruck crashed into a fire hydrant and tree before catching on fire, and we're now hearing from the recruit for the first time about exactly what happened. Arenas — the 18-year-old son of former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas — talked with the Los Angeles Times about what he experienced after the crash and the bizarre things his Cybertruck did leading up to it.
After finishing up a pre-dawn workout, Arenas was driving home when he noticed his Cybertruck was behaving weird. He says the car wasn't registering that he left the gym and its main screen kept flickering on and off. After stopping at a red light, he attempted to switch lanesm noticing that "the wheel wasn't moving as easily as it should," according to the LA Times. While drifting into the right lane, Arenas realized he couldn't get the Cybertruck to move back into the left.
This is where things got really bad, according to People:
"So then a car is coming towards me, and I think that I'll just pull over," he said. "So I speed up to pull over to the right in a neighborhood because there are cars parked on the street I'm on to the right. But when I'm speeding up to turn, I can't stop. The wheel wasn't responding to me — as if I wasn't in the car."
From there, the Cybertruck smashed into a fire hydrant, then a tree, before bursting into flames.
Alijah recalled hitting a curb and passing out for three minutes. He came to thinking that he was at home; however, after hearing "cracking noises," he discovered that he was in his car, which was on fire.
Brandon Woyshnis/Getty Images
Alijah Arenas describes for the first time publicly how the steering wheel of his Tesla Cybertruck locked up and led to his fiery April wreck in Reseda.
"The wheel wasn't responding like I was in the car," Arenas said pic.twitter.com/OUb2bBacfT
— Ryan Kartje (@Ryan_Kartje) June 24, 2025
Things got even worse as Arenas attempted to get out of the Cybertruck. We've talked in the past about how Cybertrucks can virtually trap you inside after a crash, and that's exactly what appears to have happened here.
After briefly losing consciousness, Arenas said he felt heat radiating off a fire that had started on the passenger side of the dashboard. Smoke was filling the cabin, and he could no longer see out of the windows. Arenas reached for his iPhone in an attempt to use his digital key to get out, but the Tesla app had locked him out, thus locking him in the Cybertruck, the LA Times reports. He attempted to open the door manually, but it wasn't budging.
Realizing getting out of the front door was a futile effort, Arenas says he climbed into the rear seat of the truck to look for an escape and get away from the flames. As we've reported before, getting out of the rear seats of a Cybertruck in an emergency is difficult at best.
Here's what The Times says he did to keep from completely passing out:
He bit his lip as hard as he could and clenched his nails into his skin. He doused himself with water from a water bottle to cool his body down. He tried to make as much noise as possible, yelling and banging on the glass. But the flames were getting hotter, the smoke getting thicker.
"I'm panicking," Arenas said. "I was fighting time."
[...]
When he woke up, "I realized my whole right side had caught on fire," he said.
But as he tore off his clothes and doused himself in water again, he heard a thud outside the car window. Sirens wailed in the distance. Just keep going, he told himself.
Arenas told the LA Times he attempted to break the Cybertruck's "unbreakable" window with his fists and then his feet. Eventually, he was able to kick the window out, and folks outside the burning wreck were able to pull him away. It was a total of at least 10 minutes from the crash to being pulled out that Arenas was stuck in the burning truck.
After waking up from a medically induced coma, Arenas asked if he had hit someone, according to People. He then went on to take full responsibility for the crash.
"Honestly, I take full responsibility for the crash, whether it was me, another car, a malfunction," he said. "I don't want to put anyone else in this situation, the people who made the car, anything like that. I take full responsibility."
Now that he's fully recovered, Arenas is looking to continue his basketball career with the USC Trojans later this month. This dude is far tougher than I.
Facebook Conversations