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PHARR — The two vehicles paced each other as they headed north along Expressway 281 just before dusk Monday.
Esther Hernandez rode in the front passenger seat while her twin sister, Mary, was behind the wheel. Their brother, Raul, and their kid sister, April, sat in the back. The family was headed to Esther’s apartment in Edinburg.
But suddenly, Esther told her sister to watch out for the red Chevrolet that crossed into their lane. Mary swerved to the right, then left, then right again before losing control of the white Ford Explorer.
“We just started flipping,” the 20-year-old Esther said Thursday afternoon. “It was just so fast — up and down, up and down — until we landed.”
Raul called out for Esther. And Esther screamed for her twin sister.
“She wouldn’t answer,” Esther said. “There was blood on the street. I saw my baby sister in the middle of the expressway.”
Esther crawled out of the mangled SUV and ran to check on April.
Other motorists stopped to help them. The fifth-grader was able to nod and wiggle her fingers, they told Esther. The little girl seemed OK.
But the driver of the red Chevrolet was nowhere to be seen, Esther said.
Pharr police said Mary died on impact. April was not OK after all and succumbed to her injuries as an ambulance took her to McAllen Medical Center.
“I don’t know what she was doing,” Esther said of the other driver. “She left. She didn’t stop.”
Esther and her 16-year-old brother came out of the crash with relatively minor scrapes and bruises.
The past week has been a bloody one on Hidalgo County roads. In addition to the Hernandez sisters, three others have died in auto wrecks, including a father and daughter killed Friday and a woman who was killed in a head-on collision on Sept. 26.
The worst can happen when drivers are careless on the highway, said Trooper Johnny Hernandez, a local spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
“It’s people not paying attention,” he said of the driver who left the scene of the crash that killed the two sisters. “They’re not paying attention to their destination. They’re not paying attention to their driving.”
The driver of the red Chevrolet car that presumably caused Monday’s wreck turned herself in at the Pharr Police Department late Tuesday evening, investigators said. Police have withheld her identity and continue to investigate the crash.
“She admitted that she was the (driver of the other) vehicle, because she was there,” Lt. Guadalupe Salinas, a Pharr police spokesman, said last week.
Whether she will face any charges and what they may be remain to be seen.
“I would want at least for the cops to do something,” Esther said. “She caused the accident. Why would she run and not try helping us? It was her fault.”
Authorities regularly cite drivers for reckless driving and other traffic violations that could otherwise result in what occurred along the expressway at the Nolana exit Monday, Hernandez said. Drivers cited for reckless driving typically say they weren’t paying attention.
“We get distracted with our cell phone, with our radio, eating, whatever,” Hernandez said. “It’s something where these distractions need to be avoided.”
On Thursday, the family of the two dead sisters greeted hundreds of mourners who gathered to pay their last respects at an open-casket wake.
Esther described her twin as “always friendly” and “a friend to everyone.” April, their younger sister, was “super strong” and a proficient student.
“She hadn’t even experienced anything,” Esther said.
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Jared Taylor covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4439.