A Two-Year-Old Girl Died on Andrews Highway. Here Is What the Law Says, and What Has to Happen Now.
On July 10, 2026, a crash at the intersection of Andrews Highway and 100th Street in north Odessa left a two-year-old girl with injuries so serious she was flown by helicopter to UMC Children’s Hospital in Lubbock — roughly two hours north by ground, a distance that tells you the local hospitals could not treat what happened to her. Three days later, on July 13, she died. Her family made the decision to donate her organs. The Odessa Police Department investigation is ongoing, and authorities have not yet released details about what caused the crash or which vehicle she was in. A 68-year-old person also involved was treated at Medical Center Hospital in Odessa with injuries that were not life-threatening. The community has spoken publicly about that intersection — a multi-lane highway controlled by nothing more than a stop sign despite the residential developments that have multiplied around it and the crashes that have accumulated there for years.
We are writing this for one person: someone in Odessa, or Midland, or anywhere in Ector County, who lost a child or a loved one on a road they warned people about, and who is sitting at a kitchen table at an hour when nobody should be awake, trying to understand what their rights are and whether anyone will ever answer for what happened. We are going to tell you everything we know — the law, the deadlines, the evidence that is dying right now, the insurance reality, what the other side is already doing, and what a case like this is actually worth — and we will not make you a promise we cannot keep. What we will do is tell you the truth, because that is what people in crisis deserve from a lawyer, and it is what we would want if this were our daughter.
What Happened at Andrews Highway and 100th Street
Andrews Highway — State Highway 351 — is a major north-south arterial that runs through the heart of Odessa in Ector County, carrying heavy traffic through commercial corridors and, increasingly, through the residential developments that have spread across the north side of the city as the Permian Basin energy economy has drawn tens of thousands of new residents to the region. The road was designed for a fraction of the traffic it now carries. At 100th Street, the highway is multi-lane, and the intersection is controlled by a stop sign — not a traffic signal. Cross-traffic attempting to cross or turn onto the highway must judge gaps in high-speed, multi-lane flow, a configuration that traffic engineering literature consistently identifies as an elevated-risk angle-collision pattern. Residents say multiple crashes have occurred at this intersection over the years. They have said it publicly, to reporters, to each other, and presumably to the city and the state — and they are saying it again now that a two-year-old is dead.
The Texas Department of Transportation, through its Permian Basin District, typically maintains jurisdictional authority over signalization decisions on state highway corridors like SH 351. The City of Odessa shares an interest in local road safety. The question of who decided this intersection did not need a traffic signal — and whether that decision was a policy judgment protected by governmental immunity or an operational failure that can be reached under the Texas Tort Claims Act — is one of the central legal questions this case may turn on. The Odessa Police Department’s crash report, when it is completed, will establish the immediate facts: who had the right-of-way, whether the stop sign was obeyed, what the speeds were, what the road and weather conditions were, and what the traffic-control devices showed. But the crash report will not answer the larger question the community is asking, which is whether this intersection was a disaster that was warned about and ignored.
The Dangerous Intersection: What the Community Has Been Saying
The residents who live near Andrews Highway and 100th Street are not describing a freak accident. They are describing a pattern. A multi-lane highway carrying high-speed traffic through an area that has transitioned from rural to suburban, controlled at a cross-street by a stop sign alone, is a configuration that traffic engineers have studied and warned about for decades. The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices — the national standard Texas has adopted — establishes specific warrants for when a traffic signal is warranted at an intersection. Those warrants include volume-based criteria (enough traffic to justify signalization), crash-history-based criteria (a documented pattern of crashes that a signal would reduce), and pedestrian-based criteria. The residents’ statements about multiple prior crashes at this intersection are exactly the kind of evidence that would feed a crash-history warrant analysis — and exactly the kind of notice that makes a governmental defendant’s failure to act harder to defend.
The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), as adopted by Texas, establishes traffic signal warrants — including volume-based, crash-history-based, and pedestrian-based criteria that may be satisfied at intersections with documented crash patterns and rising traffic volumes.
Prior crash data for this specific intersection would be discoverable through two primary sources: the Odessa Police Department’s own crash records and TxDOT’s Crash Records Information System, known as CRIS. A formal open-records request under the Texas Public Information Act should be filed immediately to pull every crash report, every citizen complaint, every traffic study, and every internal communication regarding this intersection. The residents who have spoken publicly have given the case its notice engine — their statements about multiple prior crashes are the first threads. But the documents behind those statements — the crash data, the traffic-volume counts, the signal-warrant studies that may or may not have been done — are what prove whether the government knew or should have known this intersection was dangerous and chose not to act.
Here is what a generalist often misses: the fact that residents complained, standing alone, is not enough to defeat governmental immunity in Texas. What matters is whether the governmental entity’s own data — the crash counts, the traffic counts, the engineering studies — showed that a signal was warranted and the entity failed to install one. The gap between what the data showed and what the government did is where the legal fight lives. And that data, if it exists, is sitting in files that no one is under a duty to preserve unless a lawyer has put the government on formal notice to save it.
Who Can Be Held Responsible
A wrongful death case arising from this crash has at least two potential lines of accountability, each with a different legal structure and a different path to recovery.
The at-fault driver. A 68-year-old individual was involved in the crash and taken to Medical Center Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The Odessa Police Department has not released details about which vehicle caused the collision, whether the stop sign was obeyed, or what role speed, distraction, or failure to yield played. What we know is that a two-year-old was killed and a 68-year-old walked away with minor injuries — a disparity that, depending on which vehicle each person occupied, may tell its own story about the physics of the collision. Texas law holds a driver who fails to yield the right-of-way, runs a stop sign, speeds, or fails to maintain a proper lookout responsible for the harm that follows. If the at-fault driver violated a Texas Transportation Code provision — running a stop sign, failing to yield — that violation may constitute negligence per se, meaning the violation itself establishes the duty and the breach, leaving only causation and damages for the jury. The owner of the vehicle, if different from the driver, may face additional liability under Texas negligent-entrustment and owner-liability principles if they permitted an unfit or negligent driver to operate their vehicle.
The governmental defendants. The intersection’s stop-sign-only configuration on a multi-lane state highway with documented crash history and rising traffic volume raises a potential claim against TxDOT’s Permian Basin District and, depending on the jurisdictional split of responsibilities, the City of Odessa. The theory is that the intersection constituted a dangerous condition — a premises defect or special defect — and that the governmental entity knew or should have known about it and failed to remedy it. This is where the case gets legally formidable, and we owe you the honesty about why.
Texas Wrongful Death Law: What a Family Needs to Know
Texas handles a death caused by someone else’s negligence through two parallel legal claims, and understanding both is the first step in understanding what this case can recover.
The wrongful death action. Texas’s Wrongful Death Act — Chapter 71 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code — permits surviving parents, a spouse, and children to bring a claim for the death of their family member caused by the wrongful act, neglect, or default of another. For a two-year-old child, the surviving parents are the beneficiaries. The damages in a wrongful death claim include the parents’ mental anguish, the loss of the parent-child relationship, and the loss of companionship that would have extended across the child’s anticipated natural lifetime. Texas does not impose a general cap on wrongful death damages against a private defendant. A jury in Ector County — twelve people who drive Andrews Highway, who know that intersection, who may have their own stories about near-misses there — is allowed to value what a child’s life was worth to the family who lost her, and that number is not limited by a statute.
The survival action. Texas also recognizes a survival cause of action, which belongs to the decedent’s estate and carries the claim the child would have had for the period between the injury and death. In this case, that period was approximately three days — July 10 through July 13. Survival damages include the medical expenses at UMC Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, the cost of the emergency airlift, any treatment at Medical Center Hospital if applicable, and the child’s physical pain and mental anguish during those three days. The survival action is separate from the wrongful death action, and a family that walks through only one door leaves money on the table.
The comparative-fault rule. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence framework with a 51% bar. This means a claimant’s recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault, and they are barred from recovery entirely only if they are 51% or more at fault. In a child wrongful death case, the child cannot be at fault — she was two years old. But the driver of the vehicle she was occupying could be assigned a percentage of fault, and that percentage would reduce the family’s recovery. This is exactly why the insurance adjuster works so hard to pin percentage points on anyone other than their own insured. Every point is money.
The statute of limitations. Texas generally imposes a two-year statute of limitations on wrongful death claims, running from the date of death — in this case, July 13, 2026. That means the family has until approximately July 13, 2028, to file a lawsuit. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing in a hospital corridor. It is not. The evidence that decides these cases — the vehicles, the black-box data, the witness memories, the intersection’s crash history — has its own clocks, and those clocks run much faster than two years.
Governmental Immunity and the Texas Tort Claims Act
Here is the honest part, and we will not pretend it is simpler than it is.
Suing a governmental entity in Texas means confronting the Texas Tort Claims Act — Chapter 101 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code — which provides a limited waiver of governmental immunity for certain claims, including premises defects and motor-vehicle claims. But the waiver is narrow, and the defenses are formidable.
The central legal hurdle is the discretionary-function doctrine. Texas courts have held that certain governmental decisions — including many decisions about traffic-control-device placement and intersection design — fall within the discretionary-function immunity doctrine, meaning the government cannot be sued for making a policy judgment about how to allocate safety resources. The argument the defense will make is that the decision whether to install a traffic signal at this intersection was a discretionary policy judgment, and therefore immune.
The argument we would make — and the argument that the documented crash history and resident complaints give a stronger factual foundation than most intersection cases — is that once the government had data showing a signal was warranted and chose not to install one, the decision crossed from a protected policy judgment into an operational failure. The line between discretionary and operational is the battlefield, and it is a line that Texas courts have drawn in different places at different times.
We will not tell you the intersection claim is certain to succeed. It is not. Governmental immunity in Texas presents significant and sometimes insurmountable legal hurdles. What we will tell you is that the residents’ documented complaints about multiple prior crashes — and the question of what TxDOT’s and the City’s own data showed about this intersection — provide a factual foundation that most dangerous-intersection cases do not have. Whether that foundation is enough to overcome immunity is a question that can only be answered through discovery, and discovery only happens if a case is filed.
There is also a procedural clock that most families never hear about: the Texas Tort Claims Act requires that notice of a claim be given to the governmental unit within a short window — generally 180 days — after the claim arises. This is a separate and faster deadline than the two-year statute of limitations, and missing it can extinguish the governmental claim entirely. If there is any possibility of pursuing the intersection-design theory, the notice clock is already running, and it is unforgiving.
The Evidence Clock: What Must Be Preserved Immediately
Every piece of evidence that decides this case is on a timer right now. Some of it is dying as you read this. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally disappear.
The police crash report (Texas CR-3) and supplemental OPD files. The Odessa Police Department’s crash report is typically available within 10 to 14 days. It will contain the fault determination, witness statements, a crash diagram, road and weather conditions, and the status of the traffic-control devices. Witness memories fade within weeks. Officer recollections degrade quickly. This report is the foundation, but the supplemental investigation file — officer notes, follow-up interviews, scene photographs — is richer and more fragile.
The vehicle event data recorders (EDR/black boxes). Modern vehicles capture pre-impact speed, braking input, steering input, seatbelt use, and airbag deployment timing. Federal standards govern what these recorders capture, and the data is there — but the vehicles themselves may be repaired, sold, or scrapped within weeks. A preservation letter to the vehicle owners and their insurers must go out immediately to prevent the vehicles from being destroyed and the data from being lost. If the airbags deployed, federal law requires the data to be locked so it cannot be overwritten — but if they did not deploy, the data can be overwritten the next time the vehicle is driven.
TxDOT and City of Odessa crash history data. The crash history for the Andrews Highway and 100th Street intersection is discoverable through both OPD crash records and TxDOT’s CRIS database. This data proves governmental notice of the dangerous condition and the pattern of prior crashes — the engine for any premises-defect or gross-negligence theory. Open-records requests under the Texas Public Information Act should be filed immediately. The data exists, but agencies are not required to preserve it indefinitely without a litigation hold.
Traffic signal warrant studies and traffic volume counts. These prove whether MUTCD signal warrants were met and whether TxDOT or the City knew or should have known a signal was warranted. Engineering studies may not be routinely updated, and prior versions may be overwritten. A formal open-records request is the first step; a litigation hold is the second.
Scene photography, measurements, and sight-line analysis. The intersection’s signage visibility, sight obstructions, lane configuration, and stop-sign placement as they existed on July 10, 2026, must be documented. Scene conditions change with roadwork, vegetation growth, or weather. Skid marks fade. This has to be photographed within days, not months.
Medical records from UMC Children’s Hospital and Medical Center Hospital. These prove the nature and extent of injuries, the treatment course, the pain and suffering for the survival claim, and the causal link to the crash. The organ donation records may corroborate the injury severity. These records are retained by the providers but should be obtained promptly.
Cell phone records of all drivers. These prove or exclude distracted driving as a causative factor — a critical fault and potentially punitive element. Carrier retention policies vary, and records older than 90 to 180 days may be purged without a preservation letter or litigation hold. If a driver was looking at a phone when they ran that stop sign, the proof is in those records — and it is aging.
The single most important thing to understand about the evidence clock is this: the deadline to file a lawsuit is two years, but the deadline to preserve the evidence that wins the lawsuit is measured in days and weeks. The preservation letter that freezes the vehicles, the logs, the phone records, and the intersection data has to go out before the funeral, not after the insurance company calls. That is not aggression. That is the only way to protect the truth.
The Insurance Reality: How Much Coverage Exists
This is the part that no grieving family wants to think about and that every adjuster is counting on you not understanding.
Texas requires only $30,000 per person in liability coverage for bodily injury — a minimum set decades ago and never meaningfully adjusted for the cost of modern medical care, let alone the value of a child’s life. One night in a pediatric intensive care unit at a children’s hospital can exceed $30,000. The helicopter flight from Odessa to Lubbock alone can cost tens of thousands of dollars. If the at-fault driver carries only Texas’s legal minimum, the insurance available to compensate a family for the death of their two-year-old daughter could be exhausted by the medical bills before a single dollar reaches the family’s loss.
This is why identifying every layer of available coverage is half the value of the case. The at-fault driver may carry more than the minimum — adequate liability limits, an umbrella policy, or excess coverage that stacks on top of the primary policy. The vehicle owner’s policy, if different from the driver, may provide additional coverage. And the family’s own automobile insurance policy may include uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage — UM/UIM — which pays when the at-fault driver’s insurance is insufficient to cover the loss. In Texas, UM/UIM coverage is presumed to be included in every auto policy unless the insured rejected it in writing. Many families do not know they have this coverage, and the adjuster is not going to volunteer it.
If the governmental defendant is joined — TxDOT or the City — the Texas Tort Claims Act imposes statutory liability limits on governmental entities that are different from the private-defendant insurance structure. These caps can limit the recovery from the governmental side regardless of the jury’s verdict, which is another reason the private-driver claim and the governmental claim are separate battles that have to be fought in parallel.
The case value analysis from our perspective, honestly framed: the floor in a case like this reflects the $30,000 minimum and the possibility that the at-fault driver has thin insurance and no recoverable assets — a child wrongful death with thin insurance is tragically common. The mid-range — roughly $1 million to $3 million — is plausible if the at-fault driver carries adequate liability limits plus umbrella coverage and fault is reasonably clear. The ceiling — $5 million or more — requires either a gross-negligence finding against a private defendant supporting exemplary damages, or a viable governmental liability theory that overcomes TTCA immunity. The documented crash history and resident complaints at this intersection provide a stronger factual foundation for the governmental track than most intersection cases have, but the legal hurdles remain formidable. Collectibility — meaning how much insurance and assets actually exist to pay a judgment — is the primary driver of case value, not the severity of the loss. The severity of this loss is immeasurable. The collectibility is what we investigate.
The Adjuster’s Playbook: What They Will Try
Within days of a crash like this, someone friendly will call the family. The voice will be warm. The words will be “I just want to check on you” and “can you tell me what happened.” The call will be recorded. Everything the family says will be transcribed and parsed for any word that can be used to reduce the value of the claim or shift blame away from the at-fault driver. This is not bad luck. It is procedure. Here are the plays, and here is how each one is countered.
Play 1: The recorded statement. An adjuster will ask the family to “just tell us what happened” on a recorded line. The purpose is to lock the family into a version of events before they have had time to process the trauma, before they know the full facts, and before they have a lawyer. Any inconsistency between this statement and later testimony will be used to attack credibility. The counter is simple: do not give a recorded statement. You are not required to. You are not obligated to speak to the other driver’s insurance company at all. Your obligation is to your family, not to their claim file.
Play 2: The fast settlement check. A check may arrive quickly — sometimes within weeks — with a release attached. The amount will seem substantial to a family drowning in funeral costs and lost income. It will be a fraction of what the case is worth. The purpose is to close the file before the family understands the full extent of the loss, before the medical bills are totaled, and before the evidence is preserved. The counter is: do not sign anything, do not cash anything, do not deposit anything from an insurance company without speaking to a lawyer first. A release signed in grief is just as binding as one signed in clarity, and the insurance company knows this.
Play 3: The “partly your fault” argument. The adjuster will look for any angle to pin percentage points of fault on the driver of the vehicle the child was in — were they speeding? Did they stop fully? Could they have avoided the collision? Under Texas’s 51% bar, every percentage point they can assign to the family’s driver reduces the recovery dollar for dollar. The counter is a thorough independent investigation — the police report, the EDR data, the reconstruction — that establishes the actual fault picture before the adjuster’s narrative hardens.
Play 4: The governmental-immunity wall. If the family or their lawyer raises the dangerous-intersection theory, the governmental entity’s lawyers will immediately assert discretionary-function immunity and move to dismiss. The counter is the documented crash history, the traffic data, the residents’ complaints, and the engineering analysis showing that a signal was warranted and the failure to install one was not a protected policy judgment but an operational failure. This is a hard fight. It is not an impossible one — but it has to be prepared from day one.
Play 5: The delay. Insurance companies know that grief is exhausting and that time works against the family. They will request documents repeatedly, ask for extensions, and move slowly. The counter is a lawyer who sets deadlines, files suit when the insurance company stalls, and forces the case into a timeline that does not let the evidence rot while the adjuster waits the family out.
How a Wrongful Death Case Is Actually Built
Here is what happens when a family calls us, and what the process looks like from the inside.
Week one: preservation. The first thing we do is send spoliation preservation letters to every vehicle owner, every insurer, both Medical Center Hospital and UMC Children’s Hospital, the Odessa Police Department, TxDOT, and the City of Odessa. These letters demand that the vehicles, the EDR data, the medical records, the police files, the crash history data, the traffic studies, and any intersection-related correspondence be preserved and not destroyed. The letter is what converts an automatic deletion into sanctionable destruction. If a governmental entity lets required evidence die after receiving a preservation letter, the law answers — an adverse-inference instruction may be available, meaning the jury can be told to assume the lost record was as bad as the plaintiff says.
Weeks two through four: investigation. We file open-records requests under the Texas Public Information Act for all crash data, traffic studies, citizen complaints, signal-warrant analyses, and internal communications regarding the Andrews Highway and 100th Street intersection. We obtain the police crash report and all supplemental investigation files. We retain an accident reconstruction expert to analyze crash dynamics, vehicle speeds, sight distances, and the role of the stop-sign-only configuration in creating the collision geometry. We begin the process of identifying and interviewing witnesses while their memories are fresh.
Weeks four through twelve: expert development. We engage a traffic engineering expert to opine on whether MUTCD signal warrants were met at this intersection and on the dangerousness of the stop-sign configuration. We engage a forensic economist to build the damages presentation. We pull the medical records from both hospitals and the air-medical transport records. We build the life-care and damages picture — the medical costs, the funeral costs, the lost income, the mental anguish, the loss of the parent-child relationship.
Months three through six: discovery. If the case is in suit, we serve written discovery, take depositions, and force the governmental entity to produce its internal files — the crash data, the traffic counts, the signal-warrant studies, and the communications about this intersection. This is where the gap between what the government’s own data showed and what it did becomes visible. The depositions of the engineers and officials who decided this intersection did not need a signal are where the case is won or lost.
Mediation and trial. Mediation should be deferred until full discovery on both driver fault and intersection history is complete. The governmental immunity question should be tested through summary-judgment practice before any settlement discussions, because the immunity ruling can reshape the entire value of the case. If the case survives summary judgment and the governmental entity is still in, the settlement leverage shifts dramatically. If the immunity motion succeeds, the case narrows to the private-defendant track. Either way, the family deserves to know where they stand before they are asked to settle.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If you are in the first days after this crash — or any crash that took someone you love — here is the practical roadmap, hour by hour, day by day.
Medical first. If anyone in the family was also injured — even injuries that seem minor — get examined. Adrenaline masks pain. A “sore neck” can be a cervical injury. Get the medical record started, because a gap between the crash and the first treatment is a gap the defense will exploit.
Do not give a recorded statement. You are not required to speak to the other driver’s insurance company. You are not required to speak to your own insurance company beyond reporting the basic fact of the crash. If an adjuster calls, say: “I am not ready to discuss the details. I will contact you when I am ready.” Then call a lawyer.
Do not sign anything. No release, no authorization, no settlement offer, no “proof of loss” form. If someone puts a document in front of you and says “just sign this so we can process your claim,” do not sign it. Bring it to a lawyer.
Do not post on social media. Nothing about the crash, nothing about the other driver, nothing about the intersection, nothing about your grief. Insurance companies monitor social media, and a photograph or a sentence taken out of context can be used to argue the family is not suffering the way they claim. Grieve privately. Protect yourself publicly.
Preserve everything. Photograph the vehicle if you have access to it. Photograph the intersection from every angle — the stop sign, the sight lines, the lane configuration, the signage. Save every medical bill, every funeral-home document, every text message, every photograph. If the police gave you a business card or a case number, save it. If a witness gave you their name, write it down.
File the open-records requests. Or, better, have a lawyer file them. The Texas Public Information Act gives you the right to demand crash data, traffic studies, and governmental correspondence about this intersection. The clock on the government’s duty to respond starts when the request is received. The longer you wait, the more time the government has to let records age out.
Call a wrongful death attorney. Not next week. Now. The preservation letters, the open-records requests, the expert retention, and the investigation timeline all start the day you call. Everything that happens before that call is evidence that is dying without anyone to protect it.
What This Case May Be Worth
We will not pretend to value your daughter’s life with a number, and any lawyer who gives you a dollar figure on the first call is not telling you the truth. What we can do is frame the economics honestly, because the law requires damages to be expressed in dollars, and the family deserves to understand the architecture of what is recoverable.
The economic damages in this case include the emergency medical transport — the helicopter flight from Odessa to Lubbock, which alone can cost tens of thousands of dollars — the hospital charges at UMC Children’s Hospital, any treatment at Medical Center Hospital, the funeral and burial expenses, and the family’s lost income while they take time away from work. The GoFundMe campaign the family has launched is understandable and necessary, and it does not extinguish or reduce any legal rights — funeral expenses and lost income are recoverable damages in a wrongful death action, regardless of whether the community has helped the family with them.
The non-economic damages — the ones no receipt can measure — include the parents’ mental anguish, the loss of the parent-child relationship, and the loss of companionship that would have extended across this child’s anticipated natural lifetime. For a two-year-old, that lifetime is decades. Texas does not cap these damages against a private defendant. A jury in Ector County is allowed to value them, and twelve people who drive Andrews Highway and know that intersection may value them differently than an insurance adjuster does.
The survival damages cover the approximately three-day window from the July 10 crash through the July 13 death — the child’s physical pain, the medical treatment, the experience of being airlifted and treated for serious traumatic injuries before succumbing. These are separate from the wrongful death damages and belong to the estate.
Exemplary damages — punishment damages — may be available if gross negligence is proven against a private defendant. The standard is demanding: conscious indifference to a known extreme risk. Against a governmental defendant, the TTCA’s limited gross-negligence exception is even more demanding. But if discovery reveals that TxDOT or the City received repeated crash data and citizen complaints about this intersection and consciously disregarded the known risk, the factual foundation for a gross-negligence argument is stronger than in a typical intersection case.
The honest range, understanding that every case depends on its specific facts: the floor reflects Texas’s $30,000 minimum insurance and the possibility of thin coverage — a child wrongful death with thin insurance is a tragedy the legal system does not adequately address. The mid-range, if the at-fault driver carries adequate limits and fault is clear, is plausible in the $1 million to $3 million range. The ceiling — $5 million or more — requires either a gross-negligence finding or a viable governmental claim that overcomes TTCA immunity within the Act’s statutory caps. Collectibility, not the severity of the loss, is the primary value driver. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Texas?
Texas generally imposes a two-year statute of limitations on wrongful death claims, running from the date of death. In this case, that deadline is approximately July 13, 2028. However, if there is a claim against a governmental entity — TxDOT or the City of Odessa — the Texas Tort Claims Act requires notice to the governmental unit within a much shorter window, generally 180 days. That clock is already running. Do not assume you have two years to act on every front — the governmental notice deadline is a separate and faster clock.
Can we sue the city or state for not putting a traffic signal at that intersection?
It is possible but legally difficult. The Texas Tort Claims Act provides a limited waiver of governmental immunity, but the discretionary-function doctrine protects many traffic-control decisions. The argument is that once the government had data showing a signal was warranted — through crash history, traffic volume, or citizen complaints — and chose not to act, the decision crossed from a protected policy judgment into an operational failure. The documented crash history and resident complaints at this intersection give this claim a stronger factual foundation than most dangerous-intersection cases. But it is not a guaranteed win, and you deserve to know that before you commit to the fight.
What if the at-fault driver only has minimum insurance?
Texas requires only $30,000 per person in bodily injury liability coverage. If the at-fault driver carries only the minimum, the available insurance may be a fraction of what this loss is worth. This is why we investigate every layer — the driver’s policy, the vehicle owner’s policy, any umbrella or excess coverage, and the family’s own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. In Texas, UM/UIM is presumed to be included in every auto policy unless the insured rejected it in writing. Many families do not know they have it.
Does the GoFundMe campaign affect our legal rights?
No. The GoFundMe campaign is a community response to a tragedy, and the money raised does not reduce or extinguish any legal rights. Funeral expenses, medical costs, and lost income are recoverable damages in a wrongful death action regardless of whether the community has helped the family with them. The support is generous and necessary. It does not replace accountability.
What happens to the evidence if we wait to call a lawyer?
The evidence that decides this case is dying right now. The vehicles can be repaired, sold, or scrapped within weeks. The black-box data can be overwritten. The cell phone records can be purged after 90 to 180 days. The witness memories fade within weeks. The intersection’s conditions can change with roadwork or weather. The two-year statute of limitations is the deadline to file a lawsuit, but the deadline to preserve the evidence that wins the lawsuit is measured in days and weeks. The preservation letter that freezes the evidence has to go out immediately — that is why the day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Will we have to go to trial?
Most personal injury and wrongful death cases settle before trial. But a case that is prepared for trial from day one — with the evidence preserved, the experts retained, and the discovery completed — settles for more than a case that was never prepared to go to a jury. The decision to settle or try a case is always the family’s. Our job is to make sure that decision is made from a position of strength, not exhaustion.
What does it cost to hire a wrongful death lawyer?
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% of the recovery before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. You can call at any hour, and you will speak to a live person, not an answering service. We serve families in English and in Spanish.
How is a wrongful death different from a survival action in Texas?
A wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family members — the parents, spouse, and children — and compensates them for their losses: mental anguish, loss of companionship, loss of the parent-child relationship. A survival action belongs to the decedent’s estate and carries the claim the person would have had for the period between injury and death — medical expenses, physical pain, mental anguish. In this case, the survival period was approximately three days. Both claims should be pursued. A family that walks through only one door leaves money on the table.
Why This Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in Texas courtrooms, including federal court. He is admitted to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he knows how to find the story the documents tell, and he knows how to tell that story to a jury. He handles the full range of personal injury and wrongful death claims, and he has been doing this work since 1998.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where claims like yours are priced, where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like the reader. He sat across the table from the insurance company’s side, and he knows the playbook from the inside — the reserve-setting, the IME-doctor selection, the surveillance, the delay tactics. Now he sits on your side of the table. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. He handles car accident cases, wrongful death, dram shop, trucking, and commercial litigation.
We are based in Houston, and we take cases across Texas — including in Ector County. When a case involves a governmental defendant — TxDOT, a city, a state agency — we bring our experience with Texas governmental liability claims and the Texas Tort Claims Act. When a case involves a child, we bring the specific knowledge that a child’s wrongful death demands — the parents’ guide to child injury lawsuits is one of the educational resources we have produced for families in exactly this situation.
Our firm has recovered more than $50 million for injured clients. We handle cases on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if trial is necessary. We do not get paid unless we win. The consultation is free. The call is answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by a live staff member, not an answering service.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What the First Call Looks Like
When you call 1-888-ATTY-911, you will speak to a real person. You will tell us what happened — as much or as little as you are able to. We will listen. We will ask a few questions — not to interrogate you, but to understand whether you have a case and what the first steps are. If we are the right firm for you, we will tell you what happens next. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you that too, and we will point you toward someone who is. The call is free. The conversation is confidential. You are not obligating yourself to anything by calling.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case depends on its specific facts, and the information here is general. The only way to get answers tailored to your situation is to talk to a lawyer — and the only way to talk to a lawyer who knows this area of law, who has sat on both sides of the insurance table, and who will tell you the truth even when the truth is hard is to make the call.
Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña conducts consultations entirely in Spanish. If your family prays in Spanish, if your grief is in Spanish, if the kitchen table where you are sitting right now is a Spanish-speaking kitchen table — we serve your family fully in your language, with the same depth, the same knowledge, and the same fight.
The intersection at Andrews Highway and 100th Street did not become dangerous overnight. The community has been saying it for years. A two-year-old girl is dead. The evidence that could explain why — and hold someone accountable — is disappearing on a clock that does not wait for grief to run its course.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Learn more about Attorney911 and the work we do for families across Texas.
