Hidalgo County, TX — August 18, 2023, Erick Alonso Villanueva was injured following an alleged drunk driver accident at around 11:15 p.m. on Shary Road.
Preliminary information about the accident says that it happened in the area of the Shary Road (F.M. 494) and Los Milagros intersection.
According to officials, 31-year-old Erick Alonso Villanueva was on a motorcycle going northbound along Shary. At Los Milagros, Villanueva stopped at the red light. The light reportedly turned green, but before Villanueva got up to speed, a Nissan Altima struck him from behind. As a result, Villanueva had serious injuries.
Police say the Nissan driver initially fled the scene, but they later located and arrested the driver. They also allege that the driver tested over two and a half times the legal limit for drunk driving. Multiple charges were recommended by investigating officials, including Intoxication Assault and Accident Involving Serious Bodily Injury.
Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman
To be rather blunt, if these details are accurate, authorities got this driver’s BAC after the crash, after the driver ran, and after they finally apprehended him. After all that, the alleged drunk driver was still extremely intoxicated. So how drunk were they leading up to the crash, and were they that drunk at a local bar?
The reason this is important is because drivers who are extremely intoxicated at this time of night were usually over-served by a bar who could also be in trouble for their role in the accident. An establishment willing to serve someone so far beyond the point of legal intoxication rarely does so just once. When our firm confronts bars who over-serve their customers, we find evidence they’d done so many times before and would surely continue to do so if left unchallenged.
Ensuring those establishments face accountability for their actions is a sure-fire way to get them to clean up their act. It’s obviously important for drunk drivers to be held accountable for their actions, but authorities sometimes put all of their focus on those drivers without considering there’s an accomplice out there still putting the community in danger. If authorities here aren’t more motivated to expand the scope of their investigations, they, too, might be missing something important.
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