by Crystal Gottfried
One man was killed and a mother and her daughter were injured in two separate accidents on Texas 46 last weekend.
James Beigntol, 62, of DeSoto, died when his Ford 500 sedan was hit by an oncoming dump truck as he attempted to make a U-turn near the 15000 block of Texas 46 on Saturday. Department of Public Safety Trooper Rusty Nesbitt said that Beigntol was trying to head west when he was hit.
Comal County sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene just after 8 a.m. and Beigntol was pronounced dead by Judge Susan Dvorak at 9:30 a.m.
According to Nesbitt, Beigntol and his passenger, as well as the dump truck driver, were wearing safety belts and speed and road conditions were not factors in the accident.
Nesbit said that apparently Beigntol just “blindly pulled out” onto the highway and although the truck driver, Cheryl Cornelison, 36, tried to avoid hitting him, she could not.
A passenger in the car, Beigntol’s wife, Pamela Begntol, 59, was flown to University Hospital in San Antonio in critical condition.
Cornelison was taken to a Texas Med Clinic with minor injuries. She will not face any charges in the incident, according to a report in the Herald-Zeitung.
In a different accident on Friday, the driver of a Chevrolet truck tried to turn left off Texas 46 onto Brentwood Drive, failed to yield the right of way, and collided, nearly head-on, with a passenger car that was headed west. The driver of the truck then ran from the scene.
Passengers in the car, Shelly Dangerfield, 39, and her daughter, 13, were flown to University Hospital with serious head injuries. On Saturday, a University Hospital spokesperson said that Dangerfield was listed in serious condition, while her daughter was listed in stable condition.
According to Bulverde Police Lt. Donna O’Connor, officers arriving on the scene around 7:30 a.m. found that the two men in the truck had fled the scene on foot. O’Connor said that she did not know where the men were from, however after finding the owner of the truck, police discovered that the men had borrowed the truck and were supposedly working at a nearby construction site.
The truck owner told police that the man driving the truck had a license. According to O’Connor, witnesses at the scene said that the two men checked on the occupants of the other car, and may have been frightened when they saw that Dangerfield and her daughter were injured.
Bulverde police issued a warrant for the driver’s arrest, but O’Connor declined to release his name. He will be charged with one count of failure to stop and render aid. The passenger will not be charged.
|