By Calvin Palmer
Five children were killed in Houston yesterday when the car in which they were traveling slid into a rain-swollen ditch when the driver lost control while trying to answer a cell phone, police said.
The Lincoln Town Car veered off the road at about 5:00 p.m. yesterday in the 2200 block of Greens Road and landed in a drainage ditch filled with 9 feet of water as a result of the massive storms that swept southeast Texas.
Houston police spokesman John Cannon said the driver of the car was the father of three of the dead children. He has been named as 32-year-old Chanton Jenkins.
Police suspect Jenkins may have been drunk and were told by one of the passengers he was talking on his cell phone when he lost control of the vehicle. He failed a sobriety test and was taken for blood-alcohol testing.
At least one charge of intoxication manslaughter is expected to be filed against Jenkins this afternoon, police said.
Jenkins, his brother and a 10-year-old girl escaped the fast-moving current that swept the car 100 feet from where it left the road and made the vehicle inaccessible to emergency workers for several hours.
The dead children included one- and three-year-old girls and three boys, aged four, seven and 11.
Divers have recovered the bodies of the three boys. The bodies of the two girls remain missing.
The size of their bodies and the time that has lapsed may make recovery of the bodies difficult.
“There’s really no telling where we will discover the bodies, if we even will,” Cannon said.
[Based on reports by the Associated Press and Houston Chronicle.]
3 Comments
April 19, 2009 at 9:35 am
Which is more deadly? Cell phones or consuming alcohol?
April 19, 2009 at 10:49 am
Hey, where are all the comments praising god for saving three people?
April 19, 2009 at 11:28 am
So, the media is going to blame this on cell phone use, and not drunk driving?