UPDATE (December 11, 2024): Further information from authorities identified two of the victims injured in the crash. They were 19-year-old Lorena Bustillos and 20-year-old Aldo Bustillos. Right now, additional details surrounding the crash remain under investigation.
El Paso, TX — November 18, 2024, a 17-year-old driver was killed and three people were injured in a single-vehicle accident on Alameda Avenue in El Paso’s Lower Valley.
According to authorities, the incident happened around 3:30 a.m. at the intersection of Alameda and Riverside Drive. Preliminary investigation suggests a male teenager was driving a Chevrolet Cruze east on Alameda when the car went through a puddle of standing water and may have hydroplaned. It then went out of control and crashed into a traffic signal pole.
The teen driver was fatally injured in the crash. Three passengers in the Cruze, aged 20, 19, and 16, were taken to an area hospital with undisclosed injuries.
The investigation is ongoing. No further information is currently available.
Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman
Crashes involving teen drivers, serious as they often are, don’t always get the careful investigation they deserve. Why? Because people often assume a young driver just acted reckless, as teenagers sometimes do. Those people view teens’ serious accidents as a byproduct of being young and careless, and I wonder if El Paso police are leaning that direction by mentioning speeding on a wet road in their preliminary reports.
It’s true that any driver can make a mistake; it’s also true that statistically young drivers make more of them. However, years of experience make me wonder if investigators maybe jumped to driver error a little too quickly here. What if there’s more to the story? Does anyone plan to check out other possibilities, like vehicle malfunctions or defects? They may not be terribly common, but they still cause auto accidents almost daily. Think about the General Motors “ignition switch” recalls a few years back: A lot of people crashed because their cars shut down in motion, due to nothing more than a heavy or jiggled key ring. The issue caused a hundred deaths and countless other injuries, but a lot of those drivers were accused of just being careless before the truth came out.
I’m not saying things have to be more complicated than they were first described. I just think that the loss of a young man’s life is more than enough reason to investigate until everyone is satisfied with the narrative. Will that be done in El Paso, or did authorities just write this off with minimal investment and move on?
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