Alcohol and speed are believed to have caused a rollover crash early Thursday that killed two young men on a remote Jefferson County road.
Five 20-year-old men from south Jefferson County were in a 1999 Pontiac that hit a guardrail on High Grade Road, which connects Deer Creek Canyon to Conifer. The car rolled over and landed on its top.
The driver, Paul Ondrish, and front-seat passenger Brandon Nichols were thrown from the car and were pronounced dead at the scene, Colorado State Patrol Trooper Eric Wynn said.
Three men in the back seat were taken to Swedish Medical Center with minor injuries. They are Paul Ladewig, Corey Grubich and Kenneth Beers.
Ondrish, Nichols and Ladewig graduated from Chatfield High School in 2004. Beers graduated this spring from McLain High School in Lakewood, where Grubich was a student.
The three survivors were charged with underage illegal possession/consumption of alcohol, police said.
Wynn said there was a deadly combination of three high-risk factors in the crash: alcohol, speed and the failure to wear seat belts.
Nichols and Ondrish were not wearing seat belts, Wynn said. The survivors were.
Nichols’ aunt, D’Ann Keough, said that her nephew was a loving son, brother, grandson, cousin and friend. “And he had an extremely big heart.”
By Thursday afternoon, several teens had posted farewells online at Ondrish’s personal My space.com page.
Ondrish’s corner of the popular website showed a photograph of the grinning young man clutching an empty bottle of Captain Morgan rum inside a car. A timer on the site ticked away the months, days, hours, minutes and seconds until Ondrish would have turned 21. His family could not be reached for comment late Thursday.
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
