One person was seriously injured Friday night after a crash at the intersection of Montoya Drive and Redd Road in El Paso's Upper Valley, according to the El Paso Fire Department. The injured person was airlifted to the hospital aboard a FireSTAR helicopter, the department said.
Details about how the crash unfolded have not been released. As reported by KVIA, the fire department confirmed one person was seriously hurt in the collision, and ABC-7 had a crew headed to the scene as the outlet continued gathering information. The station said it would provide further updates as more details become available.
A Corridor Long Flagged for Safety Gaps
The stretch where the crash happened has drawn scrutiny from city planners before. A 2018 City of El Paso infrastructure presentation identified Montoya Drive as a narrow, 2.53-mile collector street that lacks standard city features such as curbs, gutters, sidewalks, and uniform street lighting, with limited sightlines in certain sections. That same presentation noted that the city's Upper Valley Traffic Study had recommended a roundabout at the intersection of Redd Road and Montoya Road, targeted for construction in 2025, though it remains unclear whether that project has since been funded or scheduled.
Municipal planning records also show that community groups in the Upper Valley have historically pushed to preserve rural street characteristics — narrow lanes, unpaved shoulders and minimal lighting — over the kind of modern traffic-safety improvements that could address those visibility issues. That tension between rural character and roadway safety has shaped how the corridor has developed, even as crash totals across the city climb.
Airlifted by El Paso's Newest Medical Helicopter
The injured person's transport by FireSTAR helicopter points to the growing role of airborne emergency medicine in the region. The El Paso Fire Department established the FireSTAR — Shock Trauma Air Rescue — partnership with Air Methods in late 2024 under a five-year agreement, according to KVIA, to provide airborne critical care and rapid transport for life-threatening emergencies across the Borderland. The aircraft functions essentially as a flying intensive care unit, equipped to perform advanced field resuscitation before patients ever reach a hospital.
El Paso police department protocol calls for its Special Traffic Investigations unit to respond and reconstruct the scene whenever a crash results in severe or life-threatening injuries, a standard practice for collisions of this severity. Under the Texas Transportation Code, any driver involved in a crash causing injury or death is required to stop immediately, render reasonable assistance, and remain at the scene until officers arrive.
Part of a Larger Pattern on West El Paso Roads
This is not the first serious wreck to snarl traffic near the Redd Road corridor this year. In January, a rollover crash involving a semi-truck near Interstate 10 injured four people and shut down I-10 East at Artcraft Road for nearly ten hours, as Hoodline previously reported.
Citywide, the numbers underline how often such crashes turn deadly or severe. Texas Department of Transportation data recorded 66 fatal crashes causing 69 deaths within El Paso city limits in 2024, along with 212 suspected serious crashes resulting in 243 serious injuries. Countywide totals for the same year climbed to 76 fatal crashes and 80 deaths, with 271 suspected serious crashes leading to 311 severe injuries.
The City of El Paso adopted a Vision Zero Action Plan in 2023 aimed at eliminating roadway fatalities and serious injuries through targeted safety engineering and speed management. Friday night's crash at Montoya and Redd, and the years-old proposal for a roundabout at that same intersection, illustrate the gap between that goal and the pace of change on the ground. The condition of the person injured Friday has not been released, and the cause of the crash remains under investigation.
