Alijah Arenas, the son of former NBA star Gilbert Arenas, recently broke his silence about the fiery Cybertruck crash that resulted in him being placed into a medically induced coma due to massive smoke inhalation.
As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Alijah, who is a Southern California basketball recruit, crashed his Tesla Cybertruck into a tree and fire hydrant in Los Angeles on April 24.
During a press conference on Tuesday, the 18-year-old said the electric car’s steering wheel malfunctioned after he went for a shooting session at the DSTRKT gym in Chatsworth, California, TMZ reported.
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“The wheel wasn’t moving as easy as it should, and me noticing the keypad wasn’t on, it was kinda just like weirding me out,” Alijah recalled. “I switched lanes without meaning to … so I thought about, wait, something is wrong. Next thing you know, I can’t get back to the left lane.”
Alijah also said that though he increased speed in an effort to enter a neighborhood, the car’s wheel was “not responding as if I’m not physically in there.” The fiery crash happened afterward.
“I wake up in the car after about three minutes. I had saw from the camera feed that the car caught fire on impact,” Alijah said.
Alijah was ultimately trapped in the car, but he was eventually rescued by some Good Samaritans who were around the scene of the crash. The 18-year-old said he later met them and expressed his gratitude for their life saving efforts.
“For me, that was just God sent,” Alijah said. “I can’t ask for anything less or anything more. God has His miracles. Everybody has miracles. I’m very lucky.”
In May, Alijah’s father similarly said his son’s fiery crash happened after the teen’s Tesla Cybertruck malfunctioned, Face2Face Africa reported.
“The car malfunctioned on him,” Arenas, 43, said during an appearance on the All The Smoke podcast. “The steering wheel went limp and ran him right into a tree.”
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.
— Ryan Kartje (@Ryan_Kartje) June 24, 2025
“The wheel wasn’t responding like I was in the car,” Arenas said pic.twitter.com/OUb2bBacfT
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