FREESTONE COUNTY —
State troopers said a 78-year-old man driving the wrong way on Interstate 45 Monday morning caused a deadly head-on collision that sent six people to the hospital and killed three others, including himself.
James Edward Warren, 78, of Richland in Navarro County was at fault, said Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper James Colunga.
"I was there, and there was no smell of alcohol and nothing to make me believe there was something of alcohol that may have caused this accident," Colunga said.
Warren's Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck struck the Nissan SUV head-on in the southbound lanes of the freeway near milepost 209 in Freestone County around 11 a.m. Monday, investigators said.
Warren instantly killed the driver of a black Nissan Pathfinder. A 14-year-old boy from the SUV later died. Their identities had not been released as of late Monday.
The SUV had two adults and six children in it.
"Preliminary investigation shows that none of the six children were buckled up," Colunga told WFAA. "We have one child that was thrown out of the vehicle."
The head-on collision caused the Pathfinder to roll into another lane, where it was struck by two other vehicles.
Paramedics used medical helicopters to rush five surviving children and a woman to Dallas-area hospitals.
The young patients are being treated at Children's Medical Center. Their names and conditions were not immediately made public as the hospital and investigators tried to locate relatives. Troopers said the family is believed to be from the Dallas area.
The crash site is about a half-hour south of Corsicana.
The accident shut down Interstate 45 for hours on Monday afternoon.
The southbound lanes of I-45 reopened about six hours after the crash.
Elderly drivers cause many accidents. We need to force
drivers to take driving refresher courses every 5 years or more often.
Drivers must also be tested for eye-sight, hearing, drugs, etc. Many thousands
of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries every year would be prevented if we do
so. Please remember that a vehicle is a lethal weapon and only a
regularly-trained, capable and fit person should operate it.