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June 19, 2001 By Aspen C. Emmett Police have identified a man who was killed in a two-vehicle head-on collision Friday afternoon as 23-year-old Francisco Pascual of Mexico. According to an accident report, Pascual was headed south on U.S. Highway 666/160 less than a mile from the Ute Mountain Ute reservation border when his car veered into oncoming traffic and collided with a westbound truck driven by Lorina Brown, 37, of Cortez. Brown suffered head and chest injuries and was transported to Southwest Memorial Hospital along with her children — Lisa Brown, 17, who sustained a broken ankle and injured knee, and Lorenzo Brown, 19, who was treated for head lacerations. All three were treated and released the same day. A passenger in Pascual’s car, Sylvia Lopez, 20, of Mexico, sustained serious head injuries and was airlifted to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction, where she was listed in stable condition Monday, according to a hospital spokesperson. No drugs or alcohol were thought to be factors in the accident, said Colorado Sgt. Ted Griffith, and the cause of the accident is still unknown. "There was no mechanical failure or anything like that that was determined by the accident investigation and with the driver being the fatality, it’s hard to tell," he said. "It could have been he was attempting to pass, it could have been that he was looking down at something else — we really just don’t know." Pascual and Lopez were not thought to have been in the United States illegally. "We had a work card from the INS on the driver in the vehicle," Griffith said. Pascual and Lopez were wearing seat belts but the people in the other vehicle were not. Both vehicles were going the speed limit. Both vehicles had Arizona license plates and neither vehicle was registered to the drivers. Despite early reports indicating a third vehicle had been a factor in the accident, no other vehicles are now believed to been involved, Griffith said. |
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Copyright © 2001 the Cortez Journal.
All rights reserved. |
