Adolfo Ruiz was a 32-year-old Texas felon handcuffed to another felon aboard a white bus early on Wednesday morning. He was on a six-hour drive to the El Sanchez prison on the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border, where he was slated to spend the next two months.
About halfway there, the bus carrying Ruiz and 14 other men skidded off the cold west Texas highway, hurtled through a culvert and crashed into an oncoming train. Ruiz did not survive; nor did nine other men, including guards and inmates.
Five more men aboard the bus, four convicts and a guard, remain hospitalized in critical condition. They are the victims of what appears to be a tragic accident in a desert boom town – one that has struggled to constrain its own growth.
The accident involving a Texas Department of Criminal Justice bus was just one of six crashes to occur in the area between 5.50am and 7.50am. Two of those accidents caused injuries.
“All we’re hearing and seeing is a great tragedy and 10 lives lost,” said Leland Maples, a man with a thick Texas drawl who has worked spreading the gospel in state prisons for more than 30 years. “Every family hurts, and every family is broken,” he said.
Ruiz, like some of the other men onboard his bus, did not have a long rap sheet. He was headed to prison for copying CDs, one of five times he’s been arrested in Texas in the last 11 years. He was expected to be released in March.
“He was a nice guy,” said his Dallas-based defense attorney, Matthew Toback. “I got along with him well. I’ve been doing criminal law for 17 years, and this is a very low-end type of criminal case. He didn’t kill anybody, he wasn’t selling drugs.”
Of the corrections officers onboard the bus, one, 18-year veteran Jason Self, 38, is being treated at the University Medical Center in Lubbock. Christopher Davis, 53, who had served for 17 years, and Eligio Garcia, 45, who had served for 22, were killed.
Four inmates were taken to the Medical Center in Odessa. Three were in critical condition. Terry Johnson, a 22-year-old convicted of robbery, was sentenced to five years in prison. Damien Rodriguez, also 22, was convicted of three counts of aggravated robbery and evading police in a car. He was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. Remigio Pineda, 34, is facing 13 years in prison for allegedly possessing methamphetamines and a gun (the latter of which would have been illegal since he was already a felon).
Hector Rivera, 37, was in serious condition. He is scheduled to be paroled from a heroin and burglary conviction in February.
Seven prisoners besides Ruiz died: Bryon Wilson, 34; Tyler Townsend, 29; Jesus Reyna, 44; Kaleb Wise, 22; Michael Stewart, 25; Angel Vasquez, 31; and Jeremiah Rodriguez, 35.
For the last two days, the scene has been a cold jumble of items of daily life, half-spilled from the gray, riveted boxcar. The white prison transport bus lies on its side nearby.
The Union Pacific Railroad Company was reportedly hiring workers to clean up items that burst from cardboard packages when the boxcar was struck by the bus. Federal, state and local officials are on the scene investigating what might have caused the accident, with icy roads a likely factor.
“The bus went airborne into the concrete culvert over here,” Texas Department of Public Safety trooper and spokesperson Elena Viramontes told the Odessa American of the accident which killed Ruiz. “Once [the bus] hit that, he struck the train.”
The accident happened at about 7.40am on Interstate 20, near the city of Odessa, which has a population of 110,000.
Temperatures in the west Texas desert can drop by 20F in a matter of hours, freezing roadways. Rain can turn to sleet and then to snow, leaving a temporary streak of black ice.
Locals such as Corey Paul, a reporter for the Odessa American, said the area has seen a major increase in traffic problems due to growth in the area that has taken place thanks to a local oil boom. Odessa’s population grew by more than 10% in the three years between 2010 and 2013.
Traffic fatalities have also increased. From 2011 to 2013 they rose 100%, going from 51 in 2011 to 102 in 2013, James Beauchamp, president of Motran, the Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance, a group that lobbies for transportation infrastructure, said.
“We have a very immature transportation system,” Beauchamp said. “It’s not very well developed, and the increase in population – it’s a deadly combination.”
