An almost-two-year-old was killed on Friday after a cement truck lost control on a slick overpass and fell onto the roadway below.
The accident happened on August 5th in Houston, Texas during a brief rain storm.
According to KIRO 7 News, he cement truck was traveling south on Beltway 8 East and Woodforest Boulevard when it started to rain. The cement truck, driven by a 36-year-old woman, then lost control on the slick roadway and smashed through the barrier wall, sending the truck plummeting off of the overpass. The truck then landed on an SUV, which was traveling through the intersection below the overpass.
The mother and grandmother were able to exit the vehicle and rescue the 22-month-old girl in the back of the SUV, but her twin brother was pronounced dead at the scene. The grandmother, mother, and baby girl sustained only minor injuries in the incident.
“We tried to grab the baby initially, first and foremost. She was kind of pinned in, and I was reaching back, (but) the front seat was a little hard to get,” Raymond Romo, who witnessed the accident, told KTRK. “And he just starts yanking on the front seat. I started yanking on the car seat for the baby to get her out and we were actually able to get her out before she was pinned in.”
“We tried to do what we can,” Joe Tijerina, who assisted Romo, told the television station. “Everybody had to get together to see if there’s any way we can move the (concrete mixer). We had an 18-wheeler try to strap a chain to it, to pull it off. We had a big four-by-four dually truck. I mean, it just wasn’t budging.”
“There were sprinkles, precipitation on the roadway. The roadway surface was slick based on the information provided to our investigators. The driver of cement truck stated that her vehicle started slipping and she wasn’t able to control her vehicle. That vehicle impacted the west concrete barrier wall and unfortunately went over the overpass and landed on the surface of the service road,” sheriff Simon Cheng said to News4SA.
It is not yet clear if any charges will be filed against the cement truck driver, who refused to be taken for medical treatment.