• December 12, 2022

UPDATE (December 15, 2022): It is our sad duty to report that Maryah Lopez died of her injuries on Wednesday, December 14.

Centerville, TX — December 10, 2022, Andrew Resendez, Whitney Escobar, and Jairus Johnson died in a single-vehicle accident on Cass Street in Centerville.

Authorities say the incident happened around midnight on northbound Cass Street near downtown. Preliminary investigation suggests Resendez, 20, was driving a vehicle north on the roadway when he lost control in a curve for unknown reasons. The vehicle left the road and crashed into road sign and a tree.

Resendez and his passengers Escobar, 20, and Johnson, 22, died at the scene. A third passenger (Maryah Lopez, 20) was airlifted to a Bryan hospital.

No further information is available at this time.

Single-vehicle wrecks are often challenging to explain, largely because it's often necessary to overcome the belief that they're all due to driver mistakes at the wheel. Even police sometimes skew their early investigations toward that; in Centerville, for example, it seems they attributed what happened to speeding or even possible impairment--though it's unclear whether they found clear evidence of either.

I have no specific reason to doubt officers' findings, and many similar crashes have occurred due to those mentioned factors, but at the same time other possible explanations can't be ignored. Consider all the people hurt by the infamous GM "ignition switch" defect a few years ago: How many people assumed they were to blame for those wrecks when in fact they were unsuspecting victims of critical part failures in their cars, SUVs, and trucks?

Whether or not some possible explanations for the Centerville wreck are more likely than others, it's important to investigate carefully and learn the truth. I think just about everyone would agree that all those young folks' families deserve the whole story, so I hope authorities ensured they got it. At the end of the day, that's the most important thing.