DALLAS --
Dallas police said two people were killed after an 18-wheeler overturned and crashed into a vehicle traveling eastbound on Continental Avenue below Interstate 35E in downtown Dallas.
The driver of the Texas Land and Air Co. tractor-trailer, 38-year-old David Simonelli of Bedford, was killed, along with 20-year-old Ashley Parra, who was driving the vehicle the truck fell on, Dallas police said.
The semi was on a ramp from Woodall Rogers Freeway to northbound I-35E when it fell over the guardrail and plunged onto the vehicle just after 3 p.m.
"The materials shifted during the time that the vehicle took the turn and just brought the whole trailer and the tractor over the ramp, falling on the vehicle," Sgt. Gil Cerda said.
Police said Parra had no chance to avoid the semi.
"I've never seen anything like it," Cerda said.
Parra's grandmother, Sue Castro, said she heard about the deadly accident just before Parra's boyfriend called her.
"He had called work, and she wasn't at work -- and she never doesn't go to work -- and she hadn't called or anything," Castro said. "So then I got to wondering, it was close to where she works."
Parra, a University of North Texas student, was a quarter of a mile from her job at Hooters.
Her grandmother said Parra was a "good kid" who was always where she said she would be.
"And when she wasn't at work tonight like she was supposed to be, I knew something was wrong," Castro said.
Castro had custody of her granddaughter since Parra was 9 years old.
"She was going to grow up and be somebody someday, and now she's gone," Castro said.
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