3 killed in multi-vehicle northeast El Paso crash that police say was caused by a speeding sports car

(Editor's note: This article has been corrected to reflect that it was a sports car and not a pickup truck that triggered the crash.)

EL PASO, Texas -- A three-vehicle crash that authorities said was triggered by a speeding sports car driver killed three people on El Paso's northeast side Friday evening, police confirmed Saturday.

The collision happened on Hercules between Mercury Street and Leo Street around 5 p.m. Friday.

The dead were identified Saturday as 45-year-old Billy Ray Ethridge Jr., 76-year-old Pascual Garcia and 72-year-old Carolina Garcia-Amaya. All three killed were El Paso residents.

Investigators said Ethridge was speeding in his sports car along eastbound Hercules when he rear-ended another car, forcing it off the road and into a tree. All three people in that car survived.

After that initial crash, police said Ethridge’s sports car ended up in the opposite lanes of traffic, and collided head-on with a minivan that contained the Garcias. Authorities said Ethridge and the Garcias all died at the scene from very serious injuries.

The driver of the car that was first struck, 23-year-old Danny Parra, told ABC-7 that he and his two passengers (23-year-old Sergio Zarate and 25-year-old John Milam Jr.) felt fortunate to walk away alive after realizing that rescue crews did not pull anyone out of the other two vehicles. Police said the the trio suffered only minor injuries.

The three fatalities were the 3rd, 4th and 5th traffic deaths of 2020. Police said there zero killed at this same time last year.