BELLVILLE, Texas (KBTX) – Troopers say wet roads and a driver’s failure to control speed led to a tractor-trailer hydroplaning and colliding with a Ford pickup along Highway 36 Monday in Austin County.
Troopers responded around 8:30 am to the wreck between Brenham and Bellville at Loop 497 in the Kenney community.
According to DPS’s preliminary investigation, a 2026 Freightliner truck-tractor towing a utility trailer was traveling southbound when the driver failed to control speed in wet roadway conditions.
DPS says the vehicle hydroplaned, crossed into the northbound lanes, and hit a 2023 Ford F-350 traveling northbound.
DPS says the impact caused the utility trailer to separate and overturn onto the Ford pickup.
The driver of the Ford, Curtis Allen Ford, 68, of Bellville, was pronounced dead at the scene. The Freightliner driver, Ernest V. Nduwamungu, 35, of Jacksonville, Florida, was taken to Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Brenham for treatment.
DPS says the crash remains under investigation.
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