A three-car crash north of Hillsborough on Saturday afternoon killed three people and injured a fourth, with law enforcement charging a man with an extensive history of drunk driving convictions for the incident.

Reports of a crash came around 3 p.m. along North Carolina Highway 57 near Phelps Road. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office shared on Facebook Saturday that its deputies were assisting with the response and a closure between Phelps Road and Rocky Lane was to last for an “extended” period, which was ultimately four hours.

The driver charged in the case is 33-year-old Carlos Gerardo Gonzalez-Mejia, a Person County resident, who made his first court appearance on Monday morning. During that, prosecutors presented facts that included witnesses seeing Gonzalez-Mejia’s vehicle traveling northbound at an “excessive rate of speed” and potentially more than 100 mph when he illegally passed a vehicle on the highway. After re-entering the lane, Gonzalez-Mejia rear-ended a car and sent that vehicle into the opposite lane — where it was t-boned by a vehicle headed south.

Orange County prosecutors said as a result of the crash, 45-year-old Bertha Alicia Vacio-Moreno and two passengers — a 14-year-old and a 7-year-old — of the vehicle struck by Gonzalez-Mejia died. The driver of the third vehicle, a 74-year-old man from Hurdle Mills, also suffered life-threatening injuries from the crash and was transported to Duke Hospitals.

When law enforcement encountered Gonzalez-Mejia after the crash, the prosecution reported in the virtual hearing, Gonzalez-Mejia smelled strongly of alcohol and had “so many open containers that [law enforcement] did not try to count.” At the time, he admitted to drinking and driving.

Gonzalez-Mejia is charged with the following, according to the district attorney’s office: three counts of second degree murder without regard, two counts of felony serious injury by vehicle, habitual impaired driving, felony hit and run, driving while license revoked, reckless driving, DWI, failure to reduce speed, and possession of an open container.

As laid out by prosecutors on Monday, Gonzalez-Mejia had his license suspended for a litany of offenses. He has four prior DWI convictions: one in Durham County from 2016, one in Person County from 2019, one in Orange County from 2020, and an out-of-state conviction from Georgia in 2022. Additionally, prosecutors said Gonzalez-Mejia faces a fifth impaired driving charge in Montana stemming from a 2023 arrest.

Orange County Judge Joal Broun set Gonzalez-Mejia’s bond at $3 million during his first appearance on Monday morning. His next court appearance on the charges is tentatively set for Jan. 16.

The North Carolina Highway Patrol, which was the investigating agency, confirmed the details in its own release on Monday. The alert said the crash is still under investigation.

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