An allegedly drunk driver crashed and caused a massive 17-car pileup that left five dead and 11 injured.
The crash that included a lorry resulted in multiple people pinned in their vehicles on southbound Interstate 35 in Austin, Texas, around 11pm on Thursday.
Five people were found dead at the scene, including an infant, a toddler and an adult, police said.
Eleven others were rushed to nearby hospitals, including two adults with life-threatening injuries.
Images from the wreckage showed a GIGG Express Inc 18-wheeler stopped in the middle of the highway surrounded by multiple totaled cars and vehicle debris. One car was stuck beneath a smaller lorry.
Cops arrested the big rig driver, Solomun Weldekeal Araya, 37, who has a Dallas address on record.
Araya has been charged with five counts of intoxication manslaughter as well as two counts of intoxication assault, and is being held at Travis County Jail.
He was due in municipal court next week in Wilmer for speeding – 63mph in a 35mph zone.
The victims names were not immediately released.
One good Samaritan was praised for helping some of the hurt motorists.
‘As you can imagine, it was a very chaotic scene,’ Austin Assistant Fire Chief Thayer Smith told FOX 4.
‘Our first arriving units only had eight people on scene until the rest of the support got here. As you can imagine with our total of 17 patients.
‘With everything, with the chaos that we had here, the bystander support at the initial onset of the call was very helpful.’
The pileup happened on the highway between Howard and Parmer lanes, roughly 10 miles north of the state capitol building.
It comes four years after five people including a mother and her seven month-old baby and five-year-old child were killed in a ‘chain reaction’ pile-up caused by a drunk driver in Spring, Texas.
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