Police say a power outage that knocked out traffic lights at a North Austin intersection contributed to a five-vehicle crash Thursday that resulted in the death of 18-year-old Javier Elijah Garcia.
The signal lights at West Rundberg Lane and Collinfield Drive were inoperable because of a power outage in the area, Austin police said. Three vehicles entered the intersection at the same time around 10 a.m. and collided. Two vehicles that were stopped at the intersection were also hit as the drivers crashed.
Garcia was taken to Dell-Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas, where he died as a result of his injuries at 10:54 a.m., Austin police said
Three other teenagers and a child were hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening, Austin-Travis County EMS medics said.
Investigators do not believe that driver impairment, weather or road conditions were factors in the crash, police said.
Officials “would like to remind the public to treat any intersection with signal outages as a four-way stop,” Austin police said in a statement.
Anyone with more information about this case should call the Austin police vehicular homicide unit at 512-974-4278.
Garcia is the 11th person to die on Austin’s roads this year, police said. At this time in 2019, only four people had died in traffic crashes.
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