On Wednesday, August 7, 2019, in the afternoon, two cars collided there. According to Danny Trejo, who was present and spoke to reporters at the scene, a driver ran a red light and struck another vehicle. The collision was forceful enough that one of the vehicles overturned, coming to rest on its roof in the middle of the road.
Trejo’s account of the traffic light is his account — an eyewitness report of what he observed or understood about the cause of the crash. It was not, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, a formal finding by the Los Angeles Police Department or any other investigating authority. The cause of any traffic collision is determined through official investigation, and the reporting at the time indicated that the cause was under investigation.
What was not disputed was the immediate situation: one car, upside-down, in a Sylmar intersection, with people inside.
The woman in the front seat was the grandmother of the child in the back. She was trapped upside down, and according to the Good Morning America account of the incident, she could be heard screaming “My baby! My baby!” from the wreckage. The child — a young boy described in various reports as a baby, a young child, a little kid, and, in some accounts, a child with special needs — was strapped into a car seat in the back of the overturned vehicle. The car seat, in an overturned vehicle, meant the boy was secured but suspended — unable to free himself and in an enclosed space that had, seconds before, been a normal family car.