A suspected drunk driver has been arrested in connection with a six-car, wrong-way crash in Texas that killed a disabled Cobb County high school student, police said Tuesday.
Richard Sanchez, 49, faces three counts of intoxication assault and one count of intoxicated manslaughter, San Antonio police spokeswoman Romana Lopez told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Miguel Hernandez, an 18-year-old senior at South Cobb High School, had just spent the holiday with relatives in Mexico, according to Channel 2 Action News.
He was returning to metro Atlanta about 2:49 a.m. Saturday when Sanchez drove a 2017 Toyota Tacoma pickup southbound in the northbound lanes of I-35 and hit the Hernandez family’s 2016 Ford Transit van, Lopez said.
Detectives said Sanchez struck the van and four other vehicles while traveling in the wrong direction for 2.7 miles, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
Hernandez and 9 other people were taken to local hospitals, the newspaper reported.
Hernandez, who had muscular dystrophy, a hereditary disease that leads to weakening of the muscles, died at University Hospital, Lopez told The AJC. According to a GoFundMe fundraising page, Hernandez suffered internal bleeding in his brain.
His family created the GoFundMe page because they need help to bury him.
Mayra Hernandez, the teen’s older sister, said she and her 2-year-old son sustained cuts and burns in the crash. Her mother, father and cousin suffered broken bones, she said.
“There's so much anger ... for the person that came and hit us,” Hernandez said.
Sanchez “exhibited signs of intoxication, was evaluated by DWI and subsequently arrested for three counts of intoxication assault,” Lopez said.
He was being held at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center in San Antonio in lieu of $250,000 bond, the Bexar sheriff’s office said.
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