Cameron County, TX — June 2, 2024, Mariah Desiree Enriquez was killed in an alleged drunk driver accident at 1:45 a.m. on the Queen Isabella Memorial Causeway.
Initial details from the Texas Department of Public Safety say that the collision happened along eastbound lanes of the causeway, which connects Port Isabel and South Padre Island.
According to officials, 20-year-old Mariah Desiree Enriquez was in a Kia going eastbound along the highway. Another vehicle was reportedly driving in the wrong direction and crashed into Enriquez. Enriquez sustained fatal injuries as a result.
Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman
The other driver was allegedly drunk at the time of the crash and currently faces charges for intoxication manslaughter. If those allegations prove to be true, it sadly wouldn’t be surprising. It also wouldn’t be surprising if this accident involved an accomplice who police have yet to call out: a bar. Here’s why that’s important.
The vast majority of wrong-way accidents involve not just intoxicated drivers but extremely intoxicated drivers. Cases I’ve handled with drivers going into oncoming traffic usually involved drivers up to two, three, or even four times the legal limit. Some were even higher than that. Someone who’s that drunk—especially approaching 2:00 a.m.—was usually illegally over-served by a local bar. That can mean those complicit alcohol providers are subject to potential criminal investigations, fines, license suspensions, and even liability for the harm done to the victims and families.
Too often, though, those providers slip through the cracks. Authorities simply have their own priorities, and they rarely extend beyond seeing a drunk driver facing charges. That’s why negligent alcohol providers who over-serve those drivers tend to face consequences only after victims and families seek out answers from professionals whose priorities align with the victims and families. In other words, my experience is that families don’t want an easy bad guy to blame. They want accountability, and police investigations alone rarely rise to that challenge.
I certainly can’t say what all did or didn’t happen here without seeing further evidence, to be clear. It’s just that I’ve had hundreds of cases against negligent alcohol providers where authorities were only motivated to get the full story after victims and families demanded answers from them. Considering how big of a problem drunk driving accidents are in Texas, I hope to see authorities here have already been taking steps to find out if there’s someone else out there who had a hand in a young woman losing her life. Unfortunately, it’d be rather unusual to see authorities take that kind of initiative.
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