Beaumont, TX — October 1, 2025, Justin Jones was injured in a truck accident at about 12:45 a.m. on West Cardinal Drive.

A preliminary accident report indicates that a 2024 GMC Sierra was heading west when it collided with a 2017 Freightliner semi-truck and crashed into a concrete barrier near Fannett Road.

GMC driver Justin Jones, 19, was seriously injured in the crash, according to the report.

The truck driver was not hurt, the report states.

Authorities have not released any additional information about the Jefferson County crash at this time.

Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman

When a crash like this gets reported, an early-morning collision between a pickup and an 18-wheeler, most folks reasonably want to know: How did this happen? Why was a semi and a pickup truck crashing into a concrete barrier in the middle of the night? And perhaps most important: Have investigators done what’s needed to get the facts?

So far, those answers just aren’t available. We know a 19-year-old in a pickup was seriously injured, and a semi-truck was involved. But what we don’t know is how their paths crossed, or why either vehicle ended up against a concrete barrier on West Cardinal Drive.

That leaves a lot of open questions, and for a crash this severe, that’s not good enough.

Depending on whether the 18-wheeler was moving or stopped, different questions arise. Was the semi drifting into another lane, stopped without proper warning or did it lose control? Was the pickup driver reacting to something the truck did, or vice versa? These are basic, but vital, questions. And they can't be answered just by looking at skid marks and broken glass.

This is where the right kind of investigation matters. For the truck, that means pulling black box data: speed, braking, throttle position in the seconds before the crash. It means reviewing in-cab camera footage, if available, to see what the driver was doing. Cell phone records, driver logs and even the trucking company’s hiring and training practices all matter when evaluating whether this crash was avoidable.

I’ve worked on cases where a truck driver was cleared by police, only for us to uncover that they were undertrained or improperly vetted, sometimes with a history of reckless driving. In one case, a driver had been fired from multiple jobs before being hired without so much as a real road test. When we pulled the black box, it showed she never hit the brakes. The police report never picked that up. We only found the truth after forcing the company to hand over data they’d rather keep hidden.

So when I see a report that simply says a truck and a pickup collided into a barrier, without saying how, I get concerned. That kind of vagueness may reflect a lack of information, but it also suggests that the deeper questions aren’t being asked yet.

Key Takeaways:

• We don’t yet know how the truck and pickup came to collide, or which vehicle struck the other first.
• Critical evidence — like black box data, dash cams and cell phone records — will help determine what really happened.
• Whether the truck was moving or stopped changes what questions investigators should be asking.
• Trucking company records may shed light on whether the driver was properly trained or screened.
• Surface-level reports rarely tell the full story; only a thorough, independent investigation can.