Richardson man charged with Texas 71 Vega deaths

A man who investigators believe caused a crash which killed two people in November on Texas 71 near Spicewood may have had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood.

Blanco County Sheriff's deputies now have charged Bala Chandra Sekhar Gutti, 29, with two counts of intoxication manslaughter for the deaths of 46-year-old Cynthia Ann Vega and her 17-year-old son, Santiago, a senior at Lake Travis High School.

Gutti, of Richardson, currently is being held in the Blanco County Jail. The Nov. 28, 2016, accident had occurred in the small corner of Blanco County that sits between the borders of Burnet and Travis counties.

The accident occurred shortly after 8 a.m. Monday, Nov. 28, on the steep, winding stretch of Texas 71 three miles east of Spicewood. Sgt. Robbie Barrera, Department of Public Safety information officer, said 911 calls had been coming in from motorists observing a 2015 Subaru “speeding and driving erratically.”

By 8:15 a.m., emergency calls were coming in from witnesses who were dumbstruck by the scene that faced them.

A DPS report stated the Subaru, driven by Gutti, was traveling west at a “high rate of speed and recklessly.” The posted speed limit in the area is 70 mph.

A 2015 Ford Focus, driven by Cynthia Ann Vega, was traveling east in the inside lane. A 2012 Volvo truck-tractor rig, towing a flatbed trailer, was traveling east in the outside lane behind the Ford.

“The driver of the Subaru failed to negotiate the curve and entered the inside lane of SH 71 into the path of the Ford and crashed into the front left with its front left,” the report stated. “The Ford entered a counter clockwise spin towards the eastbound guardrail. The Subaru entered a clockwise spin towards the westbound barrow ditch.

“The driver of the Volvo (truck), seeing the crash, tried to take evasive actions and avoid the crash of the two vehicles in front of him … (but) was unable to avoid the Focus and hit the passenger side. The impact caused the Ford to flip onto its passenger side.”

The impact killed the Vegas and seriously injured Cynthia Vega's boyfriend, Justino Rodriguez, who was a passenger in her vehicle. He and Gutti both had to be airlifted to University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin. The driver of the tractor-trailer, Lonnie Wade Jackson, was not injured.

According to the DPS, Gutti admitted to having been drinking the night before the crash and had a blood-alcohol content (BAC) of .175, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08.