“We are deeply saddened for the families that are mourning right now. And our hearts and prayers go out to them,” said Daniel Andraca.
DALLAS — Daniel Andraca and his children, Kevin and Brenda, were on their way from Bossier City, Louisiana, to Austin for a birthday party.
Instead, five days after the devastating multi-vehicle wreck on I-20 in Kaufman County, they are finally home. They say they’re thankful to be alive but struggling mentally and emotionally with everything they witnessed.
“But we’re mostly just struggling with the mental part of it, you know. It’s just hard,” Daniel Andraca told WFAA.
Kevin, 20, was driving his white Mustang, his sister in the passenger seat, and Daniel Andraca in the back seat.
“It was so fast. Everything happened so fast,” he said.
Traffic had slowed to a stop, dozens of vehicles bumper to bumper, when a big rig truck driven by Alexis Osmani Gonzalez Companioni hit them at highway speeds. Investigators say he admitted at the scene that he’d fallen asleep and woke up to the collision. First responders report there were no signs he ever hit his brakes.
A Ford 150 with five members of the McKellar family from Fort Worth was hit first.
Gonzalez-Companioni’s 18-wheeler cab went over and through the vehicle. Zabar McKellar, 52, his wife Krishaun, 45, their son Kason, 16, and grandfather Billy McKellar, 79, were killed. Evan McKellar, 20, was the only survivor from the vehicle, one of her feet amputated in the crash. She was airlifted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas in critical condition.
In photos taken after the crash by Daniel Andraca, you can see his son’s Mustang, windows shattered and rear bumper torn off, came to rest next to the big rig and the McKellar family’s vehicle with a heavily damaged Jeep Compass to their left.
The driver of the Jeep, Nicole LaJeunesse Gregory, 49, was the fifth fatality, her car coming to rest against the wire barrier in the center median.
A GoFundMe account for the family of Nicole Gregory appeared on Thursday. Her friends tell WFAA that her family is too distraught to talk publicly. But in the online post shared that:
“Nicole was such a light and her vibrant spirit, joyful presence, and deep love for her family and friends made her unforgettable. She brought warmth, laughter, and love wherever she went—and the impact she made on others will never be forgotten. Thank you for holding Nicole and her family in your hearts.”
Andraca says their trauma in no way compares to what the families of the victims are going through. But he plans to seek counseling for himself and his two children. One reaction from his daughter tells him he should.
“After we got away from the wreck, I tried to hug her to make sure she was OK. She pushed me away and said don’t touch me and that was something that I was not expecting….but then she pointed at my shirt.”
The blood that covered his shirt was not his own.
“It could have been us, it could have been us,” he said. “And we are deeply saddened for the families that are mourning right now. And our hearts and prayers go out to them.”
Alexis Osmani Gonzalez Companioni is held in the Kaufman County Jail on five counts of manslaughter and four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.