All Jesse Sanchez could do as the flying dirt and the lights of the SUV rolled toward him was grab his fiancée’s arm and pull left.
Crissa Chavez went right.
Chavez and nine other good Samaritans who stopped to help at a rollover accident on Interstate 225 in Aurora were struck by the oncoming sport utility vehicle, which itself had rolled.
Chavez, 22, and two others died from injuries suffered in the predawn collision. Seven were hospitalized.
“It happened so quick, so fast,” said Sanchez, 38. “I looked for her, and there she was right below me, all bent up.”
The driver of an Isuzu Trooper traveling south on the highway about 4 a.m. Saturday lost control and flipped over the center median and into the northbound lanes at I-225 and East Mississippi Avenue, said Aurora police Sgt. William Revelle.
Sanchez and Chavez, engaged since she learned of her pregnancy three months ago, were heading home on the northbound side after delivering the last of the homemade burritos they sold at local nightclubs and the Aurora Medical Center.
“This truck just came tumbling at us,” Sanchez said of the first rollover. “Crissa just screamed, ‘Oh, my God, we have to help those people.”‘
Sanchez said he parked on the right shoulder and, with others who had stopped on the southbound side of the highway, ran to the overturned Trooper, then kicked in the windshield.
He said the group pulled two women to safety; they were shaken but apparently not seriously injured.
“Crissa kept asking one if she was OK,” Sanchez said. “They were pretty dirty. The girl kept hugging Crissa, saying she was sorry.”
As the group gathered at the center median, a Ford Explorer heading north hit one of the cars parked along the roadway, then rolled into those who stopped to help.
Police identified the two other people killed at the scene as Terry Oliver, 53, of Denver and Joshua Tucker, 29, of Littleton.
One of the victims lay dead about 3 feet from Chavez, whose legs were bent to one side, Sanchez said. An artery to her leg had been severed, he said.
“I was focused on her; didn’t even see him. Her last words were that her legs were ‘messed up,”‘ Sanchez said through tears at his mother’s Aurora home late Saturday.
She died later at Aurora Medical Center. The staff had just finished the burritos the couple delivered earlier, Sanchez said.
Two children were among those taken to the hospital, but they were not seriously injured, Revelle said.
No information was available on the condition of the Trooper driver or the Explorer driver.
“She was just awesome,” Sanchez said of Chavez, whom he met at a local nightclub. The two lived with Chavez’s mother, Aggie Chavez, in Lakewood.
They planned to marry, have their child and buy a home, Aggie Chavez said of Sanchez and her daughter.
“She was so happy about Jesse, about the baby,” Aggie Chavez said.
A Jefferson High School graduate, Crissa Chavez loved to fish and camp and dabbled in basketball, Aggie Chavez said.
Lately she had spent time designing clothes to sell on the Internet.
Sanchez said Chavez also was excited about the success of the burrito business, Bomb Burritos, and the outlook for their painting business. It was typical for them to work until 5 a.m., he said.
“She stood with me; she helped and would do anything for anybody,” he said. “We had plans.”
Staff writer Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer can be reached at 303-820-1316 or awittmeyer@denverpost.com.
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-820-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
