Two minors are dead and three other young people are in hospital with serious injuries after a white van that fled a Texas state trooper in Fort Worth was found overturned and burning at the end of a residential street in the early hours of Saturday, November 14.

Source: DFW Scanner

At around 2:30 a.m., a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) trooper saw the white van travelling at a high rate of speed at the intersection of Northeast 28th Street and Lulu Street in Fort Worth, according to DFW Scanner's report of the incident. The trooper attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver fled and the trooper lost sight of it.

A short time later, the trooper found the van overturned and on fire at the end of Oscar Avenue, north of Northeast 31st Street. The trooper and Fort Worth Police Department officers were able to remove several injured occupants from the vehicle, DFW Scanner reported.

The driver and a rear-seat passenger, both minors, died in the crash. Three passengers — two minors and an 18-year-old man — were all transported to local hospitals with serious injuries. The conditions of the three hospitalised passengers had not been released in the reports available on Saturday.

A second, independent on-scene report by Live Storms Media videographer Brett Adair described the same sequence: a pursuit that began over speeding shortly before 2:30 a.m. and ended in a fiery rollover crash at Oscar Avenue and Northeast 31st Street, with two people dead inside the van. That report said the pursuing trooper pulled three people from the vehicle before other first responders arrived and was himself taken to a local hospital for smoke inhalation.

Source: Live Storms Media

What investigators have — and have not — said

DFW Scanner reported that the crash is an ongoing investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety and that no further information would be released at this stage. DPS had not issued its own detailed public statement about the crash in the reports available on Saturday, and no official account of the van's speed, why it left the road, or whether any other vehicle was involved has been published.

The identities of the minors who died will not be released, DFW Scanner reported. That is consistent with the protection given to juvenile victims: this report likewise does not name, describe or picture any of the minors involved, and refers to them only by their role in the vehicle and the city where the crash happened.

Background: the streets and the agency

Northeast 28th Street, Lulu Street and Oscar Avenue are residential streets in north Fort Worth, a part of the city of single-storey homes rather than highways — which is why a high-speed flight and a burning vehicle at the end of Oscar Avenue drew an emergency response into a quiet neighbourhood before dawn. The Texas Department of Public Safety is the state's police agency; its troopers patrol Texas highways and state roads and its investigators examine serious and fatal crashes, including crashes that follow an attempted traffic stop.

What happens next rests with that DPS investigation. Investigators will work to establish the sequence of the flight and the rollover, and the hospitals treating the three surviving passengers have not released their conditions. As of Saturday evening, authorities had announced no arrests or charges in connection with the crash, and DPS said no further information would be released while the investigation continues. Awaaz Punjab will update this story if DPS publishes its findings.