Woman, four kids go around barricade, end up stranded in flooded Medina River

BEXAR COUNTY (KTSA News) — A woman and her four kids were stranded in high water while driving in southern Bexar County Thursday night.

It happened on FM 1937 at the Medina River.

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said arriving deputies saw two teenagers, a one-year-old, and a five-year-old on top of the car in the water.  The sheriff said Bexar County ESD 10, ESD 2, and the San Antonio Fire Department used a ladder truck to get them off the top of the car.

Salazar said the driver — the mother — drove around the barricade that had been blocking the road because of the high water.

“It’s important to know that is an arrestable offense,” the sheriff said.  “The mom’s been through a lot today and we didn’t want to go that route.  But, quite frankly, she could be facing criminal charges later on down the road.  I think at that point, if you are facing criminal charges, that’s the least of your worries.  I think she pretty quickly realized that herself and her four kids could be gone.  For me, I think that’s punishment enough.”

Salazar and ESD 10 Chief Robert Hogan said the road had been dry earlier in the day, but the river is expected to continue to rise because of runoff from the Hill Country.

“It’s almost a running joke in law enforcement that people will see barricades up and they’ll see a law enforcement officer right in front of the barricade and sure enough people will pull up and go, ‘Is the road really closed?'” the sheriff explained.  “It’s frustrating to see.  They do that with us there, so you can imagine an unmanned barricade, people saying, ‘Oh, it can’t be that bad, there’s not a cop here.’  So they’ll go around and absolutely that’s probably what happened here.  This lady thought that she could make it through and seeing the water she thought she could make it through.  But that’s three feet of water.”

Salazar said one of the teenagers is actually in the process of getting his driver’s license and actually had the Texas driving manual with him.  One of the deputies opened it up to them and showed them in the handbook where it talked specifically about barricades and low water crossings to point out specifically why what happened was wrong.

No one was injured.