Wrong-way crashes are hidden problem in Bexar County

John Garcez visits the grave of his brother-in-law and best friend, Juan Urrutia, who was killed when Jacob Perez, who was drunk and driving the wrong way on U.S. 90, hit their car, which Garcez was driving and Urrutia was a passenger in, in San Antonio on May 19, 2012. Garcez visits Urrutia's grave at least once a week, bringing Urrutia's favorite drink, Big Red, and a baseball or football, for their shared love of sports. less John Garcez visits the grave of his brother-in-law and best friend, Juan Urrutia, who was killed when Jacob Perez, who was drunk and driving the wrong way on U.S. 90, hit their car, which Garcez was driving and ... more Photo: Lisa Krantz, San Antonio Express-News Photo: Lisa Krantz, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Wrong-way crashes are hidden problem in Bexar County 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

On a clear summer night in 2010, Robert Mendoza was driving with his family on U.S. 90 near Zarzamora Street when he noticed traffic in front of him slow down and move to either side of the highway.

Mendoza assumed there was an accident up ahead.

“Instead,” he said, “we were the accident.”

Mendoza didn't know it, but a pickup driven by a drunken U.S. Army private named Jacob Vincent Perez was speeding the wrong way down the highway.

What happened next was sudden and deadly: A Dodge Nitro in front of him exploded into pieces, “like something opened it up,” Mendoza said. And then a dark blur hurtled toward his car — Perez's blue Ford F-150, which police later said had been driving the wrong way for at least five miles.

In the moment before the truck hit Mendoza's car head-on, he had only enough time to reach out his arm to shield his daughter and yell one command.

“Hold on!”

A wrong-way crash on a major highway sounds implausible. How could someone be so confused or drunk as to drive up an exit ramp and head into oncoming traffic?

Yet such crashes have been a persistent problem in Texas — with figures in Bexar County nearly topping the list when compared with the four other largest counties, according to an analysis of state crash data by the San Antonio Express-News.

Between 2007 and 2011, at least 136 wrong-way accidents on Bexar County's major highways and interstates injured 138 people and killed nearly 30.

That's more crashes than on similar highways in Dallas County, which has more people and traffic, and almost as many crashes as Harris County, the largest county in the state.

The crash data are derived from accident reports filled out by police officers and compiled by the Texas Department of Transportation, which provided a copy of the electronic records to the Express-News for this report.

The records show wrong-way crashes are often tied to inebriated drivers. In nearly 70 fatal accidents in the five counties, alcohol or drug use was identified as a contributing factor in two out of three crashes.

Many accidents occur on Fridays and Saturdays, particularly in the subsequent early morning hours after bars close. Of 100 drivers whose blood-alcohol levels were recorded in the accident data, the average was 0.19 — more than twice the legal limit.

Despite the severity of wrong-way crashes, which often involve high speeds and head-on collisions, until recently the problem largely flew under the radar in Bexar County.

Six years before Mendoza was hit by a wrong-way driver, a report published in 2004 by the Texas Transportation Institute recommended ways that major Texas cities, including San Antonio, could cut down on such accidents.

The report suggested tracking 911 calls about wrong-way drivers, which would help authorities find the locations where motorists get confused. San Antonio police and TxDOT didn't start doing that until last year, after a police officer died in a wrong-way crash.

“Where was the emphasis on fixing this?” asked Kimberly McGuire, whose cousin Erica Smith died in a wrong-way accident on Loop 410 in December 2007.

Local transportation and police officials acknowledge how deadly wrong-way crashes can be and said they are working on solutions.

Asked why the problem was overlooked for so long, they point out that wrong-way accidents occur infrequently compared with other types of wrecks.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said the nature of such crashes defy belief — how can motorists fail to realize something is awry when they drive the wrong way up a highway exit ramp?

“It's like Bizarro World,” McManus said. “Everything is backwards when you do that.”

Another reason for the lack of attention: There hasn't been a major push by federal highway officials to tackle the problem or raise awareness, which leaves local communities to take action.

In Bexar County, that process didn't get started until summer 2010 — a month after Mendoza's accident.

Even before the crash, Mendoza said he was usually alert like a hawk when behind the wheel, watchful for any possible hazard on the road.

On the evening of July 12, 2010, his vigilance didn't help him.

It was just before 11 p.m. when Mendoza was driving on U.S. 90 with his daughter, April, and 11-year-old nephew Dallas Brooks.

A Dodge Nitro, driven by John David Garcez, was in front of them.

Garcez and his brother-in-law Juan Valente Urrutia had just helped Garcez's niece Linda move out of her Northwest Side home. Urrutia sat in the passenger seat of the Dodge Nitro, and they were driving behind Linda's car.

Though Garcez and Urrutia were related by marriage — their wives were sisters — they also were best friends. More like brothers, even. Godfathers to each other's daughters.

They were talking when Garcez saw Linda's car suddenly swerve out of the lane.

Then he saw the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

Garcez tried to jerk the Nitro to the left, but it was too late: Jacob Perez's pickup slammed into the passenger side. Perez's pickup exploded as the undercarriage of his truck flew over the Nitro.

The F-150 landed in front of Mendoza and hit his car square in the center. The impact sent Mendoza's car spinning in a circle across the highway until it came to rest perpendicular to traffic. Perez's truck landed next to the eastbound guardrail. A witness, who put out the pickup fire, said Perez was screaming for help from inside the truck.

Mendoza got out of his car several minutes later; the crash had jammed his door shut. He stood up, and pain stabbed his right side. (X-rays later showed his hip was broken. His daughter injured her back, and his nephew fractured his collarbone.)

Mendoza saw Perez, and then finally understood that a truck had hit him.

Mendoza looked across the highway. Garcez was screaming for help.

Bits of glass were embedded in Garcez's face, head, ears and eyes. His knee was pinned beneath the dashboard.

But he was alive, and he could move. He pulled himself out. He called out to Urrutia, to ask if he was OK.

Urrutia didn't answer.

The lower half of Urrutia's body hung from the passenger side door. The upper half was pinned between the seat and the door frame. Most of his right side had been crushed.

A man who stopped to help told Garcez to pray because Urrutia didn't look like he would make it. They had just finished the prayer when Garcez heard Urrutia take his last breath.

“He gasped and let it out and I knew that was it,” Garcez said, weeping.

Emergency workers arrived. Garcez begged them to cut Urrutia out of the car. They threw a blanket over his body.

“My world crashed,” he said.

Two years later, Garcez still has questions. He heard Perez was driving the wrong way on Interstate 37 before “exiting” to U.S. 90. Perez had driven into oncoming traffic for several miles.

“I get angry as to why he didn't get stopped before that five miles, with the amount of 911 calls coming,” Garcez said.

At the crash scene, San Antonio police officers eventually arrested a belligerent Perez, who would later claim he had blacked out after drinking the alcoholic drink Four Loko and didn't remember anything until he woke up in the hospital. A jury later sentenced him to probation.

Police officials in the department's upper echelons soon began to understand that they were dealing with a problem much bigger than the single tragedy that claimed Urrutia's life.

In August, less than a month after the crash, SAPD Lt. Billy Biesenbach Jr. sent an email to his captain, Patrick Murnin, to start a discussion about a problem that wasn't well-known to the public or to the many officers who work the day shift.

“Over the past two months I have had the opportunity to work the DWI Step program from 2230 to 0430 hours,” Biesenbach wrote, describing the night shift. “During this time I was amazed by the number of wrong way drivers on our inner-city highways. It is not uncommon to have two or more incidents of wrong way drivers a week.”

Biesenbach offered a sobering assessment:

“Currently we have no means to stop wrong way drivers and no plan of action to deal with this deadly act.”

In response to Biesenbach's email, Murnin told officers to begin formulating plans and to contact other police departments around the country that might be dealing with the same problem.

Through the fall of 2010 and early part of 2011, officers brainstormed. They discussed installing barriers in parking lots of establishments that sell alcohol, if that business butts up against a highway access road, in order to force drivers to make a right turn.

They looked to other countries for help, such as Germany, where wrong-way drivers on autobahns trigger an announcement on all vehicle radios.

In November, SAPD set up a new policy for officers to use portable spike strips to stop wrong-way drivers — a risky maneuver to be used in limited circumstances.

And shortly after he sent his original email, Biesenbach sent another suggestion, that the sighting of a wrong-way driver should activate an emergency tone on all police radios, alerting them to the possible danger ahead.

“That would be a huge officer safety issue,” Biesenbach wrote. “Officers could be heading into the path of a wrong way driver and not even know it.”

The use of the alerts attracted the attention of TxDOT's TransGuide center, which monitors cameras on the county's major highways and displays electronic messages for motorists.

“I started hearing from our operators, ‘Wow, there was another (wrong-way) report last night,'” traffic engineer Brian Fariello said.

“I felt like we needed to really start talking about this,” Fariello said. The topic began coming up in transportation meetings.

The little-known problem wasn't so hidden anymore. But Biesenbach's warning about the danger to police officers was prescient.

Less than eight months after he wrote that email, a wrong-way driver killed Stephanie Brown, a young single mother and fellow San Antonio police officer.

vdavila@express-news.net

jtedesco@express-news.net