9 taken to hospital after car crashes into food truck, crowd of people in Austin

Multiple people are hurt after a "major collision" at an Austin intersection which sent one vehicle into a crowd near a food truck.

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Nine people were taken to the hospital Friday night after a T-bone crash between two vehicles pushed one of the cars into a food truck and a group of pedestrians in Austin, Texas.

Austin-Travis County EMS said first responders started getting multiple calls about the crash around 8:18 p.m., and by 8:24 p.m., its first ambulance arrived on scene. 

A woman who spoke with Nexstar's KXAN said she was picking up food nearby when she heard the crash.

"We heard a car speeding up, revving up, and then all of a sudden a huge pop, and we came out here as fast as we [could] to find this huge truck hit a tiny little car and made the biggest noise," Taylor Sezanne recalled.

The force of the impact sent the car toward the crowd, emergency responders said. Photos from the scene show the damaged sedan had come to a stop against a Thai-style ice cream truck.

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Eleven adults were injured, but EMS workers said only nine were taken to the hospital — one of them being the driver of one of the vehicles. Victims were sent to two local hospitals, including two with serious, potentially life-threatening injuries and two others with potentially serious injuries, according to EMS officials. 

Two of the patients were declared "trauma alerts," which Austin-Travis County EMS explained is a classification system used in conjunction with hospitals. It gives hospitals an advance notice that incoming patients may be in need of serious trauma services or an operating room, the agency said. 

Two of the injured people declined treatment or transport at the scene, EMS said.

"They may have been a little bit scraped up, but certainly not anything to need any kind of treatment or assessment or transport; they were able to walk away,” said ATCEMS Public Information Officer Capt. Christa Stedman. 

In total, nine ambulances, two district commanders and administrative assets responded to the area.

The Austin Police Department is currently investigating, but said it’s too early to determine if any charges would be pending.

"I think that you should never be speeding, especially in the middle of Austin when there's people walking around," said Sezanne. "And be extra careful driving, because anything can happen, and it happens within 10 seconds."