UPDATE @ 10:19 a.m. (Feb. 16):
Jail records show the man arrested in the 500 block of Leo Street following a semi crash has been identified as James Brian Hampton, 30.
Hampton was booked on a warrant and preliminary charges of criminal damaging, breaking and entering, theft, obstructing official business, resisting arrest and theft.
INITIAL REPORT:
Police arrested a man suspected of trying to steal a semitrailer from a trucking business only to abandon it in the 500 block of Leo Street in Dayton.
Dayton police were dispatched sometime after 11 p.m. on a report of a semitrailer into a house. What they found was the empty cab of a semi, its nose resting against a house on Leo Street.
OTHER LOCAL NEWS: 1 dead in crash on I-75 South at Dryden Road
Tammy Nava Celestino said she was in her house when she heard a horn sounding and looked out the window.
"You saw thes semi coming across the [Leo] street. It jumped the sidewalk and went straight into my neighbor's house."
She checked underneath the vehicle, then called 9-1-1 and told the operator she would climb up in the cab, take it out of gear and shut it off.
"I got in and turned it off and there wasn't even anybody in the truck. It was running, keys in it, windows rolled down....," Nava Celestino said.
It was up against the house, she said.
"Thank God nobody lives there," she said.
She's thankful the houses in the neighborhood have thick, cement porches around the houses.
The suspected thief -- who was driving -- had gotten out of the vehicle and run from the scene. Police caught him a short time later.
We will update this developing report as more information becomes available.
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