Picture credit: Constable Emmanuel Zamora

An accident involving three vehicles happened early this afternoon as police pursued a suspect vehicle that crashed into other vehicles on South Getty near the Post Office in downtown Uvalde. The accident caused delays and a temporary road closures as emergency responders attended to the scene.

  The Uvalde Police Department posted the following statement on its Facebook page: “UPD Officers and First responders are on scene of a three vehicle accident at Main & Getty St. Avoid the area possible and use alternate routes. The highway will be CLOSED for an unknown amount of time.” 

  An update was issued by Constable Emmanuel Zamora at 2:45 PM today stating that the roads were back open and the area was cleared. 

 The Uvalde Hesperian is currently gathering more information about this accident.

  A two vehicle accident occurred at the intersection of High Street and West Main Street/ Highway 90 as the driver of a Mitsubishi passenger car failed to yield to an emergency response vehicle just before noon on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2022. 

  The report provided by Texas DPS investigating the incident states the following: “The 2022 white and black Ford SUV was traveling eastbound on US 90 in the city limits of Uvalde.  Driver

of the black and white was responding to an emergency call with the lights and siren activated. The driver of the black and white was approaching the intersection of High Street and US 90, in the left turn lane. The driver slowed down, activating his air horn intermittently. The light was red when approaching the intersection. The driver of the Mitsubishi was traveling south on High Street. The light was green while entering the intersection. The driver of the Mitsubishi didn’t see anything until she noticed lights striking her vehicle in the intersection.

  The black and white took slight evasive action to his right before impact. The Mitsubishi came to rest in the southeast corner of the intersection. The black and white came to rest partially in both eastbound lanes of traffic at the crosswalk line facing southeast. :  Contributing factors: for the black and white -Disregard Stop and Go Signal (Fail to ensure safe operation that the cross traffic was yielding).The Mitsubishi Fail to yield the ROW- Emergency Vehicle.”

  According to the report, the driver of the black and White had minor injuries  and was taken to Uvalde Memorial Hospital. The driver of the Mitsubishi had minor injuries was also transported to UMH. There were no other passengers.

Over the past week, driver’s on Highway 90 near Knippa have likely noticed digital signs posted along Highway 90 near the Frio and Dry Frio Bridge. The signs showed illuminated text reading   Road Work beginning on May 19th. What the sign didn’t say was the work would end that same day.

This morning, traffic was diverted to alternate lanes  of Highway 90 along the bridge areas and road workers could be seen with safety vests and traffic cones were plentiful.

Later this afternoon, the road workers and traffic cones were gone and traffic flow was back to normal on this stretch of Highway 90. So what kind of work was happening that took less than one day to complete?

According to TxDot Public Information Officer Veronica Beyer, an engineering firm was conducting load testing on the Frio River and Dry Frio Bridges. There was no construction work or repairs happening on those bridges or Highway 90. The testing is complete.