Driver Charged With DWI, Evading After U.S. 377 Pursuit Ends North of Lake Kiowa

Collinsville police said a driver was arrested Sept. 4 and charged with driving while intoxicated and evading arrest or detention with a vehicle after a pursuit that drew in more than one agency and ended just north of Lake Kiowa.

The department gave its account on its Facebook page, the account the City of Collinsville's official police page points residents to. Police said the call came in as a report of a reckless driver headed north on U.S. 377 out of Tioga. Officers moved to stop the vehicle, according to the statement, and it fled. The department did not release the driver's name, and its statement does not establish where the driver lives.

State law defines both charges. Texas Penal Code Sec. 49.04 makes it an offense to be intoxicated while operating a motor vehicle in a public place. Sec. 38.04 covers intentionally fleeing a peace officer the driver knows is attempting a lawful arrest or detention, and the statute treats the use of a vehicle during that flight as an aggravating circumstance.

The arrest fell inside a statewide effort. TxDOT said it was paying out grant money to help agencies find and arrest impaired drivers from Aug. 14 through Sept. 7, timed to a period the agency says turns deadly on Texas roads. Over Labor Day weekend last year, TxDOT reported, drugs or alcohol were involved in 57% of the state's crash deaths, and 26 people died in less than four days.

DWI cases are steady work for departments along this stretch of highway. Cooke County agencies reported 113 DWI charges in 2025, up from 94 the year before, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety's agency-level report, with Gainesville police accounting for the largest single share. Grayson County agencies, where the chase began, reported roughly six times Cooke County's total, though their count slipped from 2024. Collinsville's own department reported six charges for the year. Tioga police reported one.

Statewide, DPS counted about 90,500 DWI charges in 2025, up from roughly 86,500 the previous year. TxDOT recorded 3,769 traffic deaths in Texas last year, down about 9% from 2024, with close to a quarter of them in crashes where a driver was under the influence of alcohol. DPS also reported that nearly a third of the DWI arrests it logged statewide in the second quarter of 2026 involved someone who had been arrested for DWI before.

The road itself is under state review. TxDOT is studying all 462 miles of U.S. 377, from Del Rio to the Texas-Oklahoma line, as part of the Texas Trunk System and the state freight network. The agency says the study will pin down where the corridor falls short and what it needs as population and freight traffic grow.

TxDOT's grant-funded enforcement period ended Sept. 7.