Six Killed, Four Injured in Crash on CR 300 in Loving County, TX
Loving County, TX — May 30, 2022, six people were killed and four were injured in a two-vehicle crash on County Road 300 in Loving County.
According to reports the incident happened Monday along CR 300 at mile marker 652, around 20 miles north of Mentone. Preliminary investigation suggests a Toyota Tundra pickup truck was headed north on CR 300 as a Ford truck was westbound on nearby Ranch to Market Road 652.
Reports say the Tundra driver ran a stop sign where the roads collided and hit the Ford truck's left side. The impact caused the Ford to slide through the intersection and hit a utility pole with its right side.
The Tundra's front passenger and three passengers in the back seat were all ejected; all four suffered fatal injuries. The driver and left-rear passenger of the Ford pickup also died in the crash. Reports don't specify which people were in which vehicle but list the victims' names as follows:
- Leoncio Tavera-Trejo, 37
- Marco Antonio Tavera-Trejo
- Ernestro Lugo, 61
- Efrain Cruz-Camacho, 34
- Christopher Villareal, 27
- Alejandro Diaz, 64
Two injured men, 30-year-old Gustavo Villareal and 22-year-old Cruz Rubiel, were taken to an area hospital for treatment. Two unidentified parties were transported to another hospital.
No further information is currently available.
Commentary on Fatal Auto Accident on CR 300 in Loving County
This is obviously a terrible accident that resulted in tremendous loss of life. I've done this work for a long time and it never gets easier to see a crash with such a high cost. My heart goes out to the families of all the people who lost their lives in the collision.
While the main priority at this point must be simply to come to grips with their terrible loss, I suspect that the victims' families may at some point start to want answers about what took their loved ones away. Maybe police investigators will provide enough of those, but then again maybe not. I've seen more than enough work by law enforcement to know it can be somewhat lacking in real information. For instance, it's one thing to know that one pickup ran a stop sign and hit the other, but will police take the time to find out why that happened?
A crash like this one can happen for a lot of reasons. People are probably inclined to blame a driver mistake like speeding or distraction pretty quickly, but what if the Toyota's brakes failed or it his a bad patch of road and lost traction? Those may not be all that common but they still happen every day all over the world and they can't be dismissed without consideration.
Even if the driver really was to blame that can mean different things. For instance, if he was impaired by alcohol when he ran the sign then a local business may be partly responsible for the damage caused in the crash under dram shop law. That business would then have a legal duty to help all the people affected by the collision get their lives back on track.
I'm not claiming to know exactly what happened out there, but I doubt I'm alone in wanting more information about how this tragic accident came to pass. If law enforcement doesn't plan to dig deep and find out the truth, maybe the investigation should be entrusted to independent experts instead.
