CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A pedestrian-involved car crash left a man with serious injuries Wednesday morning and questions about a bus stop along Leopard Street that a number of STX Beef plant workers use every day.
At 6:59 a.m., a 41-year-old man attempted to cross Leopard Street near a bus stop across from the plant's gates and was hit by a pickup truck.
He was taken to a local hospital with serious injuries.
The bus stop does not have a crosswalk nearby, and the pedestrian was cited for the crash due to his failure to yield the right of way to the truck driver.
3NEWS took a look at the area to see what, if anything, could be done to make that crossing safer.
Just hours after the accident, another bus stopped in the 9000 block of Leopard Street, right across the way from the STX Beef plant.
One employee heading to work made it across all four lanes of the state highway, but her co-worker who got off that earlier bus on Wednesday morning wasn't as lucky.
The man who was hit ended up being dragged down Leopard Street for a few hundred feet before the truck that hit him could stop.
Corpus Christi Police Department officers said the driver told them he did not see the man because the sun was in his eyes.
He was not ticketed over the accident.
Another worker agreed that a crosswalk system is needed here -- especially after what happened Wednesday.
"A crosswalk and some lights for crossing," said Margarito Maldonado.
"It's that dangerous?" we asked.
"Yeah, it is," he said.
Maldonado said he takes the bus every day and could always see the dangers here.
Turns out -- so did Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority Deputy officials.
They said they have been working on putting in a crosswalk system where the accident happened.
"We are really close to going to construction, building a crosswalk right now," said RTA Deputy CEO Michael Rendon. "So, in the past, we have had concerns and calls for this particular area and we went out and we looked at it and we found out. Yes it is a concern."
The planned crosswalk system will be similar to the one located along Staples Street in front of Walmart, Rendon said, and it should be in place within the next few months, if not sooner.
Digital content producer/Domingo Live! producer Iris Gonzalez contributed to this story.
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