The phone call no family ever wants to get came again this week
out of Sabine Pass, Texas. Twenty-two-year-old Caleb Burge has
died from his injuries, making him the fifth person to lose his
life in a catastrophic multi-vehicle crash that tore through
Highway 87 on a Monday afternoon and hasn’t stopped taking
ever since. He’d been clinging to life at Christus St.
Elizabeth Hospital when the news finally broke. Five funerals.
Five families. One stretch of road that changed everything.
It all started around 4 in the afternoon on Monday when a
Chevrolet Express passenger van drifted out of its lane on
Highway 87 in Sabine Pass and crossed directly into oncoming
traffic. Nobody knows exactly why yet. What investigators do
know is that the van slammed head-on into a Prevost passenger
bus traveling in the opposite direction. Before the dust even
had a chance to settle, an Audi came barreling into the rear
of that same bus. Three vehicles. One violent chain reaction.
And lives unraveling in real time.
The four men who never made it off that highway were riding in
the van. The driver, 28-year-old Cesar Rojas of Baytown, was
killed along with his passengers — Emmanuel Reynosa Rivas, 27,
Angel Dominguez, 28, and Osvaldo Alvarez, 37. All four were
pronounced dead right there at the scene. These weren’t
strangers. These were somebody’s son, somebody’s brother,
somebody’s coworker. Gone in a single Monday afternoon on a
road they’d probably traveled dozens of times before.
Then came Caleb. At just 22 years old, he had survived the
initial crash — or so it seemed. He was rushed to the hospital
and held on for days while the community prayed and waited.
The Texas Department of Public Safety made it official shortly
after: Caleb Burge had succumbed to his injuries. That quiet,
devastating update pushed the death toll to five and sent
another family into the kind of grief that doesn’t have a
timeline or a finish line.
Several others from the crash are still fighting through their
recoveries. Raul Silberio Trujillo, 38, Rodolfo Garay Jr., 37,
Fernando Rojas, 50, and Robert Zackery Sebastia Hoyt, 26, were
all transported to area hospitals after the collision. Some
have since been released. Others are still under medical care.
The bus driver — a 48-year-old man from Vidor — and the Audi
driver, a 28-year-old from Rosharon, were also hospitalized
with injuries whose full extent hasn’t been made public.
LNG officials issued a statement saying they’re fully
cooperating with investigators and that their hearts go out to
every family touched by this tragedy. They also clarified that
the Prevost bus involved in the crash was contracted through an
EPC contractor and was empty of workers at the time of the
collision. That detail may matter as the investigation moves
forward, but it does nothing to ease the grief settling over
this tight-knit Gulf Coast community.
Texas DPS investigators are still working to figure out what
made that van cross into oncoming traffic in the first place.
Was it mechanical failure? A medical episode? A moment of
distraction? Nobody has answered that yet. What is certain is
that Highway 87 in Sabine Pass became the site of one of the
worst road tragedies this region has seen in a long time — and
the people who called this area home are left to pick up
pieces that may never fully come together again. Five people
went out on a regular Monday and didn’t come back. That’s the
part that sticks.
