A man and his young child died Saturday morning following a car accident in Dallas.
James Lee Bernard III, 25, was driving with his 1-year-old son James Lee Bernard IV and his 22-year-old long-term girlfriend in the 6400 block of Grand Avenue around 2:45 a.m., per Advocate Magazine.
Investigators concluded Bernard was traveling at a rate of high speed and lost control of his 2007 Mercury Milan, which then hit a curb and crashed into a tree.
Bernard was pronounced dead at the scene. The child, who was sitting on the elder Bernard’s girlfriend’s lap, was taken to a hospital and later died from his injuries, according to reports from FOX 4 KDFW News. The woman was also transported to the hospital and remains in serious condition.
Faye and Isaiah Burns, the elder Bernard’s aunt and uncle, said they received a call from law enforcement around 4 a.m. informing them of the crash.
“I got a phone call saying he had been in a bad car accident, but we didn’t know what happened,” she said.
Faye and Isaiah told WFAA they went to the hospital, where they waited three hours for an update before calling the morgue for answers.
“The morgue told [me] at that time that he was not going to be brought to the hospital because he was pronounced dead at the scene,” Isaiah said, per WFAA.
Faye and Isaiah said the accident and its aftermath have been hard to accept. The loss of Bernard’s young son, they said, was particularly painful.
“I just hate — we didn’t even really get to know him,” Faye told WFAA. “He didn’t even get to grow up. His life just ended too soon.”
“It’s amazing when you watch their personalities start to develop and he was a happy baby,” Isaiah told WFAA. “He was just a great little kid.”
