A 36-year-old DJ was killed overnight in northeast Houston after his car left the roadway, rolled several times into a ditch and slammed into a pole. Houston police said the man was ejected from the vehicle during the crash and appeared not to have been wearing a seat belt.
Officers were dispatched at about 2:39 a.m. to the 9000 block of Humble Westfield Road, near McKnight Lane, according to Click2Houston. Police said the man was a DJ and was leaving a party before the crash occurred. Houston Fire Department personnel arrived and pronounced him dead at the scene.
Driver Ejected, Seat Belt Use in Question
Investigators told the outlet the driver was ejected from the car and appeared not to have been wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash. The cause of the crash remains under investigation, and no further details about what led the vehicle to leave the road have been released.
A Broader Pattern on Houston Roads
The fatal crash adds to a year in which traffic deaths have drawn growing scrutiny across the city. During the first three months of 2026, 67 people died on Houston roadways, according to TxDOT figures cited by Houston Public Media, a total that outpaced the 49 murders reported by the Houston Police Department over the same stretch.
Figures for the full prior year vary depending on the source and counting method. Houston Public Media reported 291 roadway fatalities in Houston for all of 2025 citing TxDOT, alongside 268 murders reported by HPD. Separately, Axios reported that preliminary TxDOT data showed 300 traffic deaths and 1,516 serious injuries in Houston crashes during 2025, down from 341 deaths the year before, while 99 of those deaths were pedestrians and 10 were cyclists among 280 fatal crashes citywide. Axios also reported that across Harris County as a whole, 517 people died and 2,758 were seriously injured in traffic crashes in 2025.
The Houston Chronicle offered yet another set of numbers, reporting that law enforcement recorded 224 traffic deaths and 1,136 serious injuries on Houston streets, including interstates, between January 1 and September 30, 2025 — a combined total the paper called the city's lowest for that period since 2020. The Chronicle also cited a separate projection that Houston was on pace for 313 fatalities in 2025, a drop of nearly 10% from a record 345 deaths the state reported for 2024. The same report noted that statewide serious injuries and deaths were projected to fall 5.3% from 2024 to 2025, compared with an expected 3.6% drop in Houston.
No name has been released for the man killed in the crash, and police have not said what caused his vehicle to leave the roadway. The investigation into the crash continues.
