A man involved in a car crash that killed two Colorado teens and injured two others Aug. 6 is suspected of driving drunk, authorities say.
Colorado State Patrol said in an affidavit that 25-year-old Ricky Avalos-Trujillo, the driver of the offending vehicle, showed signs of intoxication at the scene and the hospital, according to 9News. The affidavit stated the man had previously been convicted of two separate DUIs.
Avalos-Trujillo admitted to detectives that he had a beer at dinner around 9:15 p.m. on Friday but said his intoxication level was a zero on a scale from 0-10, according to 9News.
The man told authorities that the crash, which occurred late Friday night on a frontage road near Castle Rock, happened because he fell asleep at the wheel, reported 9News. Avalos-Trujillo was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide and DUI, with his bond set at $750,000, according to CBS News.
The head-on collision that happened near Castle Rock, Colorado killed two Castle View High School seniors, Audrey Todd and Colton Bellamy, and injured two other teens, including 17-year-old Maddy Tobler, who was hospitalized, according to 9News.
17-year-old Rae Jensen told the outlet that she saw the crash with her brother and his friends around midnight while going to pick up her brother and his friends.
“My friend’s car was right there and I just parked and I ran and he goes, ‘Please help, Rae. Please help.’ It’s absolutely traumatizing. No one should have to see that,” Jensen told 9News, adding that the two teens “didn’t deserve this.”
The community is gathering donations to help Tobler, one of the teen survivors of the deadly incident who is still hospitalized with severe injuries, recover, 9News reported (RELATED: Colorado Teacher Sent To Re-Education Training For Suggesting To Teen That Trans Youth Regret Transitioning)
“We just want to ensure Maddy gets the best medical and mental healthcare that she can get,” a friend of Tobler’s mother, Aubree Besant, told 9News. “She’s [got] a long road ahead of her and the last thing we want is for her parents to have to worry about the financial aspect of it.”