I-25 Wrong Way Crash

Now I don’t watch the news much, but this is a different case, I was involved. On July 5th, I was driving to pick up my friend from the airport who had gone to California for a week. Her flight was delayed and coming around 10 o’clock PM instead

Wrong Way Driver

of 8 o’clock PM. As we were driving back, she needed to get some snacks so we stopped at a gas station before heading back on the highway. This caused me to miss the exit to get onto the tollway, which is the

quickest way home. We were taking the long way route back to the highway and multiple times I had the urge just to take an exit and turn around to go back, but she insisted that I stay on the same road because it would take us to I-25 (which was true). About 5 minutes into merging into Interstate 25, driving on the passing lane, I eventually saw two white lights on the same lane as I was. The first thought that came to mind was “what the hell is that?” then asked “is that construction lights or something?” then came to the conclusion that “that might be a car coming right at me!”. Without exactly knowing it was in fact a car driving towards me, I instinctively swerved to the right. I had lost sight of the lights by this time as I was trying to gain control of the car as I tried to stay on the road. It was to much for the car to handle at such speeds

Vehicle where the passenger was killed

and hit the median 3 seconds after I had swerved out of the way. I estimate that I had hit the cement wall at 70+ MPH. At first I couldn’t see out of my right eye as it throbbed with pain, then I began to worry about my friend who actually ended up asking “are you ok?!” first. I responded with a yes. We got out of the car as smoke began to consume the inside. By the time I got out, there were cars pulling over to the side and I ran into a guy already on the phone talking to the police. I asked him “is it true, was there a car driving the wrong way?” He said “yes…you were lucky”. I was relieved to know I had survived, and with that, wasn’t seeing things.

I was told to sit on the wall because I kept my hand over my right eye that seemed as though I was in pain. Everyone kept telling me “it’s going to be ok, the ambulance is coming”. I held my hand over my right eye as it throbbed, not able to see out of it, I thought to myself “I won’t be able to see out of this eye ever again”. The police arrived first and asked for my insurance and driver’s license and a short story of what happened. Then the ambulance came. Multiple police cars were speeding across the other side of the road. I overheard the police saying she was still driving the wrong way and they were trying to catch her. The paramedic asked me question after question and encouraged me to be taken to the hospital due to the speed we had hit the wall. I took the offer without hesitation. As I was loaded onto the vehicle, one of the paramedics said “we got a 4-0″. I asked what that meant and he said “someone had died, it pretty much means the person’s vitals are gone by the time we get there”. We all assumed it was the driver who was going the wrong way.

Elizabeth Long's Vehicle

As soon as I got to the hospital my eye began to swell to the point where I couldn’t open my eye. The doctor asked if there was any other types of pain I was feeling as they put pressure around my eye and I didn’t feel much of anything. They wanted a scan of my skull just to be safe, I took the offer.

Good thing I did. An hour after the scan they had found a fracture underneath my right eye, but wasn’t serious enough to require surgery. Then the officer to took my insurance and ID came and found me to return my stuff and ask more questions. I asked, who was the person who died? He said “it was a passenger of a vehicle she had collided with, yes, it wasn’t the driver going the wrong way”.

The next day, I had received a call that the driver was Elizabeth Long was released from jail and that the death was Mary Warren. She was a 22, a CSU grad student, who lived in Fort Collins. Almost sounds like me!?

Their is more information and even a video of me talking to the reporter of CBS4 Denver. I am wearing an eye-patch due to the grossness of my swollen beat up eye (plus it’s cool!)

Interview

My friend and me talking to th reporter