CARY — Police say the three-vehicle accident on Aug. 24 that injured six people, including three students at Cardinal Gibbons High School, began when the car carrying the students ran a red light.

The driver, Laura Santiago, 17, of East Church Drive in the Governor’s Club development in Chatham County, was cited with failure to stop at a red light at Trinity Road and Chapel Hill Road, police said.

Santiago was driving a Toyota north on Trinity Road, returning from lunch with fellow Gibbons students Matthew Sheehan of Cary and Annetta Santiago of Raleigh, when she ran the red light. The car was hit broadside by a truck going east on Chapel Hill Road, according to a Cary police accident report.

The truck swerved to try to avoid the collision and hit a Honda driven by Ferguson Chiedozie Maduako, 24, of Hollow Court in Garner, the report says. The truck overturned with Maduako’s car stopped up against it, while Santiago’s car spun around before coming to rest in the westbound lanes of Chapel Hill Road, police wrote.

The three Cardinal Gibbons students were seriously injured. Maduako and a three-year-old passenger and the truck driver were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

Maduako was charged with driving with a revoked license, operating a vehicle without insurance, operating an unregistered vehicle and displaying fictitious license tags, police said.

Two weeks before the accident, Morrisville police had arrested Maduako at a Medalist Court apartment complex and charged him with larceny, assault on a female and misdemeanor marijuana possession. At that time, on Aug. 10, he gave police a Gorman Street address in Raleigh.