On Sunday afternoon, family members say ShaVohn White was driving to pick up her son in Huntsville, with her two daughters in the car when she got a flat tire.
"She was in the side of the road for someone to come and get her and for two hours until the accident," grandmother of the children Shundrell White Brady said. "There was constant communication between her and one of her siblings and someone who was trying to get her."
White Brady didn't know it then, but she would soon learn that an alleged drunk driver, 55-year-old Donald Carson, had plowed into her daughter's car, which was parked in the inside shoulder of I-45 in Conroe. Her granddaughter Chamiria was killed at the scene.
"It's horrifying. One almost unbelievable. I'm still trying to process all the information and everything that's going on, so I'm just almost like just going through the motions," White Brady said.
The family says White and her five-year-old daughter Chloe suffered severe burns and broken bones. Both are currently in the burn unit at Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center.
Their aunt Latricia Tolliver says the little girl is asking to go home.
"'Where's my mom? I'm ready to go home,'" Tolliver says. "And I said, 'Baby, they're not hurting you, they're helping. You're going to be fine, but I need you to be still, don't move.'"
Carson, who is also in the hospital, is facing one count of intoxicated manslaughter and two counts of intoxicated assault. A warrant obtained by ABC13 shows he told Conroe police that he had been drinking prior to the crash, though investigators don't yet know where.
"I just hope and pray that people would make better decisions and choices before they get behind the wheel of a car because it affects everybody. It affects a family," Tolliver said.
Records show Carson has one other DWI conviction on his record, 22 years ago in Beaumont.
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