A man believed to be 33 years old was killed on the city's west side Wednesday night after his truck came off its jack and crushed him while he was making repairs outside a home. San Antonio police said officers found him already dead when they arrived, just before 9 p.m. at a house in the 1400 block of W. Kings Highway near Fredericksburg Road.
According to San Antonio police, cited by KENS 5, the man was working beneath his truck when the jack holding it up gave way. A San Antonio Fire Department spokesperson confirmed in an email that the vehicle fell on top of the victim. An officer at the scene told the station that the man's wife had come outside to check on him and found him pinned underneath the truck.
A Wife's Discovery on Kings Highway
The details of how the man was found underscore how sudden the tragedy was: he had simply gone outside to work on his vehicle, and it was his wife, stepping out to check on him, who discovered him trapped. By the time officers arrived at the Kings Highway address, there was nothing more to be done.
Not the First Time a Jack Has Failed in San Antonio
Wednesday night's death echoes a strikingly similar case from January 2021, when 23-year-old Jesus Aaron Hernandez Garcia was crushed and killed while repairing his truck in the 200 block of Finton on the city's South Side. In that case, as reported by KSAT, San Antonio police said the car jack Hernandez Garcia was using gave way, and the truck fell and crushed him around 8:20 p.m.
Deaths tied to vehicle repairs are not confined to San Antonio. Last month, a Houston man died after a pickup truck rolled backward onto him while he worked on it at a Spring Branch home, with Click2Houston reporting that the truck could not be placed in park. Houston Fire Department crews gave the man lifesaving treatment at the scene before he was taken to a hospital, where he later died.
A Recurring Hazard Beyond Texas
The danger extends to professional settings as well. In September 2025, a 43-year-old mechanic in Kennedale died when the vehicle he was working on fell off a jack at a repair shop, according to NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. Firefighters with the Kennedale Fire Department tried to save him, but he later died.
A similar incident outside Texas illustrates the same risk. In Warsaw Township, Pennsylvania, 25-year-old Gage Alexander Rowe died after the jack stands holding up a vehicle he was working underneath gave out, as reported by CBS News Pittsburgh. Authorities determined Rowe's cause of death to be blunt-force trauma and ruled it accidental.
No further details about the San Antonio case, including the man's full identity or whether an investigation remains open, have been released.
