Last week, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, two 23-year-old men were involved in a fatal car accident in northeast Harris County. But it wasn’t until over 12 hours after the crash that the bodies of both victims were actually found.
According to local investigators, it is believed that the two young men were traveling east on East FM 1960 at 2:30 in the morning when their car went off the road, through a ditch and hit a concrete wall. It is unknown how fast the car was traveling, but it is likely that it was at a high speed, because after hitting the wall, investigators think that the car rolled into a nearby parking lot, hit a metal pole, and then actually left the ground, going airborne before hitting a utility pole and landing on a U-Haul car trailer.
Following the accident, one of the young men was found lying outside the car. Severely injured, he was immediately transported via helicopter to Houston’s Memorial Hermann Hospital. He died from his injuries later that day.
Firefighters and emergency medical technicians from the Atascocita Fire Department searched the scene of the crash, but did not see any signs that there was a second person in the car. According to a spokesman from the Harris County Traffic Enforcement Section, they had no reason to believe there was more than one victim involved in the accident.
The car’s registered owner, Bill Gonzales, was told by friends Wednesday afternoon that his son might have been involved in a car crash earlier that morning. He was unable to reach his son, so, over 12 hours after the accident occurred, he drove to the scene of the crash.
Recognizing his son’s car, he walked around the debris and spotted a work boot over a 100 feet away from the wreck. Beyond a barbed wire fence, he found his son’s body in heavily wooded area. Almost 200 feet from the site of the crash, rescue workers had not searched the wooded area.
Harris County investigators are continuing to look into the fatal accident, but primary reports believe that alcohol played a factor. It is unknown who was driving the car.
Source: Houston Chronicle, “Son’s body ‘etched’ in mind of dead after wreck,” 4/29/11.