Sarah “Charlie” Royer, 30, of Mesa, was the driver in the crash that killed her boyfriend, 29-year-old Robert Jeffrey Pifer, according to Royer’s mother, Dalene Hood.
Hood told InMaricopa today that her daughter was in the process of moving to California to be with Pifer. The couple was returning to Arizona to pack some of her belongings when the wreck occurred 2 miles west of city limits before 5:30 a.m. Saturday. Royer was driving a Honda Civic eastbound on State Route 238 with moving boxes in the car when a silver Audi SUV traveling westbound crossed into their lane, Hood said.
“The car looked like someone dumped over a bucket of Legos,” said Hood, 59, also of Mesa. “I didn’t know a glove box and console could be outside of a car and in that many pieces.”
Hood recalled hearing Pifer’s last utterances in a phone call moments after the crash.
“I heard him screaming. I heard him moaning. Then, I heard nothing,” she said.
Royer was seriously injured and thrown from the car, while Pifer, the passenger, was trapped in the wreckage. Hood said a woman and child in the Audi, which was photographed by InMaricopa Saturday with catastrophic front-end damage, were airlifted to Chandler Regional Medical Center. Their status is unknown.
Hood contends the Audi driver was at fault. The Arizona Department of Public Safety’s investigation remains ongoing.
The crash happened here, between Rio Bravo Road and 83rd Avenue.
