Single mom, two children unhurt in crash with elk on Gulf Freeway

GALVESTON, Texas -- A single mother who struck and killed an elk on the feeder road of Interstate 45 late Tuesday night said she feels lucky to have survived the accident that wrecked her only means of transportation.

Heydi Martinez was driving home from her job at the Libbie’s Place Adult Day Care Center in Galveston, her two children along, when she spotted the bulky beast standing in the grassy median between the freeway and the feeder road.

At first, she thought the animal would dart out into the freeway, but it turned and ran full speed for her SUV. The impact crunched the front driver’s side of her SUV. For a split second, Martinez thought the vehicle would roll, but it stayed upright, and no one was injured, she said.

"My oldest son was in shock," Martinez said. "He just kept saying, ‘Did we kill him, Mommy? Did we kill him?’ And I just kept saying, ‘No baby. He’s fine. He’s fine.’"

In a panic, Martinez called Texas City Police Department and reported that she’d struck a moose on the feeder road. The police officer laughed at her, she said. There are no moose in Texas, he said.

Texas City Police Department spokesman Sgt. Joe Stanton, said when the officer went to look for the animal he couldn’t find it. She probably hit a cow, he told her and filed the report that she had hit a steer, the police department said.

This was no cow, Martinez told the officer. She described the animal’s thick hair and pointed to some of the fur still stuck in her grill. Maybe it was a deer, the officer suggested. It was too big to be a deer, Martinez said.

The county’s lead game warden, Capt. Eddie Tanuz, confirmed the dead animal was an elk but no one seems to know precisely where the animal came from. Though a dead elk was found in Montgomery County a couple of weeks ago, the only native elk in Texas lived in the southern part of the Guadalupe Mountains, near the border with New Mexico, and have been extinct since the early 1900s. Some elk live at the Bayou Wildlife Park, 5050 FM 517, but all were accounted for. Tanuz said it’s possible that the elk lived on a piece of land in the area.

Meanwhile, the accident left Martinez in a terrible bind, she said.

"She was just really struggling, and this was one more thing," Alice Williams, Martinez’s boss at Libbie’s Place, said.

Without a car, Martinez is having trouble getting to and from her two jobs in Galveston where she lived before Hurricane Ike destroyed her apartment and forced her to move to Dickinson. She can’t afford to miss work so she’s been paying people to drive her to the island to work at adult day care center and The University of Texas Medical Branch. On Thursday, a gracious co-worker drove her home for free, she said. She has insurance, but the deductible is $1,000 and doesn’t cover a rental car. She plans to pay the deductible using the money she was saving to visit her mother in Mexico.

Despite her troubles, Martinez said she’s grateful she and her children were not injured.

"SUVs roll easily, and I thank God that didn’t happen," she said.

 

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