A 20-year-old man is facing two felony charges after deputies say he was driving drunk when his off-road vehicle rolled over multiple times in East El Paso County on Saturday, injuring five teenage passengers, two of them seriously. Jorge Alberto Gomez Alvarez was booked into the El Paso County Detention Facility and is being held on a $10,000 bond.
El Paso County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to a crash at the intersection of Ponchatula and Mandeville on Saturday, according to KTSM 9 News. Investigators say the off-road vehicle was traveling westbound in the 14900 block of Mandeville when Gomez Alvarez lost control and it rolled over several times. The vehicle was carrying five juvenile passengers, ranging in age from 15 to 16 years old, all of whom were transported to local hospitals for further medical evaluation. Two of the teens sustained serious injuries.
Deputies determined Gomez Alvarez was intoxicated at the time of the crash and arrested him in connection with the incident. He has since been charged with two counts of intoxication assault with a vehicle. The sheriff's office's Special Traffic Investigators unit, a specialized team deployed exclusively to crashes involving life-threatening injuries or complex vehicular crimes, assumed control of the scene.
A Felony With Steep Stacked Penalties
Under Texas Penal Code § 49.07, intoxication assault is a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in state prison and a fine of up to $10,000 per count, according to FindLaw. The charge requires prosecutors to prove intoxication directly caused serious bodily injury — meaning harm that creates a substantial risk of death or permanent disfigurement. Because multiple juveniles were hurt in the same crash, Texas Penal Code § 3.03(b) gives judges the discretion to stack sentences consecutively for each victim rather than let them run concurrently, as is standard in most Texas criminal cases, per Deandra Grant Law.
Separate from the intoxication allegation, operating an off-road vehicle on a public roadway is itself illegal under Texas law. State statute restricts ATVs and side-by-sides from public streets, roads and pedestrian walkways except in narrow circumstances such as master-planned communities or agricultural work, according to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles.
Part of a Troubling Pattern in East El Paso County
Saturday's crash is not an isolated case. Just a week earlier, on August 22, El Paso County Sheriff's deputies arrested 40-year-old Edgar Amaya for driving while intoxicated after crashing a Can-Am Maverick off-road vehicle into a barrier on a paved pedestrian walkway near Tornillo, an incident that seriously injured a passenger, according to the Waverly Tigers Cadence. And in February, the sheriff's office investigated a fatal case in which an ATV illegally driven on Endwall Street struck and killed a 3-year-old child.
Sheriff Oscar Ugarte said the Saturday crash illustrates the serious consequences of mixing alcohol, unsafe driving and off-road vehicles on public roads. He added that the sheriff's office will continue working to keep impaired drivers off roads and hold accountable those who endanger others. In March, a separate off-road vehicle crash in the Montana area of Far East El Paso sent an ATV driver to the hospital with serious injuries, prompting deputies to publicly urge riders to wear proper protective gear and avoid paved roads, according to KVIA.
Crash Comes Amid Active DWI Crackdown
The Saturday crash also lands squarely within an active, high-visibility enforcement push. Ten days earlier, Sheriff Ugarte announced that the sheriff's office DWI Task Force had joined Mothers Against Drunk Driving and TxDOT's Drive Sober. No Regrets. campaign to run saturation patrols through Labor Day weekend, targeting late-summer impaired driving.
Statewide, 1,254 people were killed in impaired-driving crashes across Texas in 2025, with fatal DUI crashes spiking most sharply between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on weekend mornings, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. The agency reports that more than 37% of Texas traffic fatalities over the past decade have involved alcohol or drug impairment. Locally, El Paso County recorded 80 traffic fatalities in 2024, down from 101 the year before, while local police data indicates alcohol-impaired crashes account for roughly 35% of all traffic deaths in the municipality, per FOX21 News.
It remains unclear whether Gomez Alvarez's official toxicology or blood-alcohol results have been released, or whether additional charges could be filed depending on the medical status of the injured teenagers. Prosecutors have not indicated whether they will pursue consecutive sentencing given the number of victims.
