CYPRESS, TX (Covering Katy News) - A 21-year-old man faces three counts of felony murder after the Cadillac Escalade he was driving struck a golf cart and killed three people.
The crash happened Sunday morning at about 2:45 a.m. near the intersection of Greenhouse Road and Town Lake Parkway. Daniel Montana Rivera was driving the SUV and was charged on Sunday.
"The defendant (Rivera) ran a stop sign and struck the right side of the golf cart," said a Harris County Sheriff's Office report. "Rivera was intoxicated from alcoholic beverages," the report said.
Christopher Scandridge, 41, Jacob Wnuk, 37, and Fraser Anderson, 37, were traveling northbound in the golf cart at the time of the crash. Wnuk and Anderson died at the scene. Scandridge was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Rivera was in stable condition when he was transported to the hospital. His two other passengers, a woman and a child, were not hurt.
The intersection was under construction, the traffic lights were not operating, and it was dark. All factors that may have contributed to the crash.
"It's a horrible situation. Driving around on a golf cart at three o'clock in the morning, you're not real visible," Major Susan Cotter told KTRK. "You look at the weights of the vehicles. The weight of a Cadillac SUV is tremendous as opposed to a golf cart. You've got a big weight differential when the golf car got hit."
Texas law allows golf carts with a license plate on roads in a master-planned community with a uniform set of restrictive covenants and a county or municipality-approved plat. Major Cotter said the neighborhood where the crash happened allows golf carts to operate because it meets all the state's criteria, but they're only allowed during the day.