Retired Bexar County Court-at-Law Judge Karen Crouch dies

Retired Bexar County Judge Karen Crouch has died of injuries stemming from a 2011 car crash caused by a drunken teenage driver, her family said. She was 62. Crouch died Tuesday at PAM Health Specialty Hospital of San Antonio. “My parents taught me that respect means listening and doing what is right,” Crouch wrote in 2012 in a candidate questionnaire for one of her judicial campaigns. “I took this lesson to heart. As a judge ... I did not just hear cases. I listened to people, applied the law and ensured that justice was done.”

The car wreck that changed her life occurred in October 2011 while she was in Vermont for a conference at the Vermont Law and Graduate School in South Royalton, Vt. An 18-year-old driver crashed head-on into a vehicle Crouch was driving. The judge’s sister-in-law, Zyra Flores, 53, was a passenger in the car and was killed instantly. Flores was an administrative assistant at Randolph AFB. “I saw lights and a blur, and boom!” Crouch recalled during a 2013 interview with the Express-News. “(Flores) was laughing and we were talking. I knew something was wrong when I called her name and there was no response.” Crouch suffered knee injuries, a fractured wrist and “life-threatening internal injuries” that required numerous hospital visits and surgeries, her family said in a statement Wednesday. She “willed herself to walk again to be there for her children,” the family said. The teen driver, Carlos Garcia, was driving 70 mph in a 30 mph zone, and his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit, authorities said at the time. He pleaded guilty in 2013 to causing a fatality while driving under the influence. He was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison.