Cops investigate Sunday traffic death

By LPR Staff

Editor/POST-REGISTER

What began as a family disturbance turned deadly on Sunday night as a Lockhart man was struck and killed by a car driven by his longtime girlfriend.

According to Lockhart Police Chief Mike Lummus, John Lewis Acosta, 35, was involved with a quarrel with Herlinda Dolores Moron at their home on Guadal

imar Street on Sunday evening. As Moron packed the couple’s children in the car to leave the residence, Acosta either jumped on the hood of the vehicle, or hung on in some way, as she traveled down Monte Vista and later to Wilson Street.

At some point, Acosta must have lost his grip on the vehicle and fell beneath it, eventually being struck and killed.

“We aren’t sure, at this point, whether it was intentional or an accident,” Lummus said on Monday. “She has been cooperating with the investigation, and we have talked to her and interviewed the witnesses.”

Although no charges had been filed on Monday afternoon, Lummus said that charges could be forthcoming, but that the Lockhart Police Department wanted to be careful with the investigation.

“Until we’re sure what happened, we are treating this as a traffic fatality,” he said. “We don’t want to charge her immediately, but that doesn’t mean that there might not be charges up the road.”

As is standard protocol with a traffic fatality, Moron received a blood-alcohol test after the incident on Sunday night. Those results were not immediately available, nor were the results of the autopsy, which was expected to be performed on Monday or Tuesday.

Services for Acosta will be held on Friday.

Anyone with information on the incident is encouraged to contact the Lockhart Police Department at (512) 398-4401 as the investigation progresses.