Friends of six killed in Johnson County crash struggle with the loss
JOHNSON COUNTY — 9-year-old Nishidha's brightly colored drawings filled with smiling faces and hearts sit on the counter.
The remote control car her 11-year-old brother received for Christmas never made it out of the box. Their shoes remain piled up at the door alongside their parents' and grandparents'. To Ayyappala Bandaru, it feels as if, at any moment, they may walk back into his Irving apartment, where they had come to visit.
"We were playing with them, we had good dinner, we had good Christmas party and we get a call saying they are no more. How can we even digest that?" said Bandaru.
His close friend and roommate, Rushil Barri, had invited his cousin, Lokesh Potabathula, along with his wife Naveena, her parents, and the couple's two young children from the Atlanta area to stay with them for Christmas.
The day after Christmas, they all headed to Glen Rose to visit Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, excited to see the animals. They were on their way back when a friend received an emergency alert on her phone that they'd been in a crash in Johnson County.
"We started calling everyone who was in the car, no one is lifting the phone," said Bandaru.
Finally, he says, an eyewitness picked up Lokesh's phone.
"This car was in an accident. A few are dead. The owner of this phone is still breathing," Bandaru remembers being told.
Lokesh was the sole survivor in the family's minivan. Now in critical condition, his friends say Lokesh remains unaware his family is gone.
"Just in a snap, his family is vanished," said Bandaru.
It's news they dread having to share. Relatives and friends are now working to get the victims' bodies back to their home country of India.
Two teens in the pickup that struck the family's van survived, but are also in critical condition. State troopers say the pickup veered into oncoming traffic.
Investigators are waiting to speak to all three survivors when they recover.
