A Texas college student saw a white truck gaining on her from behind and moved partly out of its way, thinking the driver wanted to pass.
The truck did not pass. Twenty-two-year-old Amethyst Delgado said it slammed into her car instead, beginning a collision that sent her into another vehicle, toward a guardrail and eventually off Highway 151 in San Antonio.
Her car went airborne before landing upside down. Delgado was still strapped inside, worried that the wrecked vehicle could catch fire.
The University of Texas at San Antonio student survived without any broken bones. Getting herself out was only the beginning of what the Sept. 3 crash left behind.
Getting Out
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Delgado told KENS 5 she was driving home from work shortly before 9 p.m. when she noticed the truck’s headlights approaching rapidly in her rearview mirror.
She edged partly off the roadway to make room. Delgado believed the truck was trying to get around her.
Instead, she said, it hit her car from behind. The impact pushed her into a vehicle ahead of her before she struck a guardrail and went off the highway.
“I spun in the air,” Delgado recalled. When the car finally came down, it was resting on its roof.
The seat belt that had restrained her during the crash now left her hanging inside the overturned vehicle. Her driver’s-side window remained closed, but the passenger window had shattered.
With the possibility of a fire on her mind, Delgado worked her way free of the belt and toward that opening.
“I cannot die right now,” she remembered thinking.
She crawled out through the broken passenger-side window.
Nobody There
Escaping the car did not immediately bring help.
Delgado said the white truck was gone. The other vehicle involved in the collision had not remained there either, leaving her on the roadside trying to get someone’s attention.
She began waving and screaming at passing motorists until somebody finally stopped and called for emergency help.
Univision 41 San Antonio separately interviewed Delgado after the crash and reported that a white pickup hit her from behind before leaving the scene.
Delgado went to an emergency room. Despite the violence of the crash, doctors found no broken bones.
She was not unhurt. Delgado described bruising on her face from the steering wheel along with swelling, scrapes and open wounds concentrated on the right side of her body.
She also came away without the car she depended on for school and work.
One Bad Month
Delgado attends UTSA and hopes to become a lawyer. She told KENS 5 she works two jobs while paying for school.
In August, her tuition bill took priority.
Delgado said she emptied her savings to pay it and let her car insurance lapse for the month, reasoning that she could get through the short gap in coverage.
Then came the crash.
She still owes roughly $2,000 on the wrecked vehicle and now has to find another way to get to school and both jobs. A fundraiser started to help with her expenses had collected nearly $6,000 by Saturday.
The white truck may also have left the collision damaged, Delgado said. She hopes its driver can be identified.
What she cannot understand is the decision to leave without finding out whether she had survived.
“He doesn’t know if I was left for dead or if I made it out alive,” Delgado told KENS 5.
For Delgado, the answer is now clear.
“I’m not done here,” she said.