In our last post we discussed a fatal I-10 car accident involving a wrong-way driver. Authorities say that they have identified the wrong-way driver as a LSU graduate student. The graduate student was a Texas native who was pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts at LSU. He was also a wedding photographer in the Baton Rouge area.

The accident which the student caused was severe and killed himself and four people in the car that he hit. Authorities say that the LSU student was driving on the highway the wrong way for at least 15 minutes before the accident happened.

Authorities also say that the driver of the other car could not avoid the accident because it occurred on a relatively narrow portion of the road that did not have a shoulder, so there was little room to maneuver. A truck and a third car also hit the wreckage shortly after the crash happened, but those drivers did not sustain serious personal injuries.

The student's car became engulfed in flames after the crash and he was burned so badly that authorities had to use dental records to identify him. It is unclear whether he was intoxicated at the time of the crash and toxicology results are pending.

"Due to the extent of the fire it's pretty difficult to determine if the driver was impaired at the time of the crash," a state trooper said. "It's happened numerous times that an impaired driver gets on the interstate going the wrong way. Then again, he may have just gotten confused in the dark."

Source: Times-Picayune, "Wrong-way driver in I-10 crash was LSU graduate student, wedding photographer," Lori Lyons, Feb. 15, 2012