A mother and her two young children were killed Saturday north of Hillsborough when a driver with a history of driving while impaired struck the back of their sport-utility vehicle, pushing it toward a truck traveling in the opposite direction.
The crash happened around 2:52 p.m. on N.C. 57 between Stroud’s Creek Road and Phelps Road, according to the N.C. Highway Patrol.
Carlos Gerardo Gonzalez-Mejia, 33, of Timberlake, was driving north in a Toyota Tundra at a high rate of speed when he struck the back of a Toyota Rav4, troopers said in a news release.
The SUV veered across the highway’s centerline, where it was T-boned by a Honda Ridgeline truck, a prosecutor said in court Monday.
The SUV’s driver Bertha Alicia Vacio-Moreno, 45, of Snow Camp, and her two children, ages 7 and 14, died at the scene, the release said.
The driver of the Ridgeline, Ronald Trevor Wiley, 74, of Hurdle Mills, was taken to Duke Hospital with life-threatening injuries, it said. A Duke spokesman said Wiley was upgraded to good condition by Monday.