Texas County family seeks answers after fatal crash probe questioned

The family of Juan Mejia-Garcia says the crash that killed him and his 8-year-old granddaughter still leaves too many unanswered questions for a Texas County case involving a drug task force agent.

The collision happened at about 8:39 p.m. on Aug. 5, 2023, at U.S. Highway 412 and Mile 33 Road, about 1 1/2 miles east of Guymon. A Chevrolet Tahoe driven by District 1 Drug Task Force agent Eldon Len Halliburton struck a Toyota Corolla driven by Juan Mejia-Garcia, 49. Mejia-Garcia and Petronila Mejia-Ramos, 8, died. Daniela Manea was severely injured and later taken to Wichita, Kansas.

Petronila was ejected through the rear window and landed about 40 feet away, according to the crash account. Halliburton was treated and released for arm and trunk injuries. For the family, those grim details have only sharpened the demand to know what happened in the minutes after impact and why the investigation did not fully answer basic questions.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol opened the incident at about 8:50 p.m. and assigned Trooper Austin Lozano, who arrived at 8:57 p.m. The report later logged Troop Z, the agency’s criminal investigations division for major vehicle-fatality cases, as en route at 10:26 p.m. The family’s advocates say the next 38 minutes after the crash remain largely unexplained, a gap that matters in a fatal wreck tied to a law-enforcement officer.

That pressure is intensified by the structure of the agency Halliburton worked for. The District 1 Drug Task Force is a multijurisdictional unit under the district attorney’s office, and Oklahoma’s District Attorneys Council says the state has 13 separate drug task forces with about 60 investigators handling narcotics cases. District Attorney George “Buddy” Leach controlled the task force, and his office has already faced scrutiny over aggressive traffic enforcement in Texas County.

A separate Oklahoma Watch and KGOU investigation reported that from 2019 to 2024, District 1 Drug Task Force agents made 6,934 traffic stops and generated more than $2.1 million through about 6,000 deferred prosecutions, most of them in Texas County. That history gives the Mejia-Garcia family’s fight broader weight: if a fatal crash probe involving a district attorney’s task force is left unfinished, the consequences reach beyond one family’s loss and into insurance questions, public confidence, and whether local and state agencies can police their own. Pedro Ramos-Mejia and Daniela Manea still want answers more than two years after the crash, and the case remains a measure of how thoroughly Texas County investigates when lives are lost.