Aurora – The city will review whether the intersection where a sport utility vehicle struck and killed a 10-year-old girl on her bike warrants a traffic light.
Erica Williams was run over last week when she and another girl were crossing busy East Mississippi Avenue at South Salida Street on their bicycles.
Dick Havercamp, manager of traffic services for Aurora, said he received a request by a resident of the area to study the intersection after the July 9 accident.
“Visibility at that intersection is adequate but not excellent,” Havercamp said. “We’ll take another look at it.”
In 1990, area neighbors requested that a traffic light be installed at the intersection, but Havercamp said it did not then meet the criteria for one. Those include how many vehicles travel on the road, speed of the motorists, how many people cross and other factors.
He said sometimes the city gets requests for crosswalks in areas without a traffic light, but the city does not put them on six-lane stretches of road, as Mississippi is at that location. A crosswalk would only encourage more people to cross there, he said, which could be even more dangerous without the traffic light.
William Flerry lives about a half-block from the accident and saw Erica get hit. He said he supports a traffic light there because cars speed along that stretch of road.
Also, motorists heading west on Mississippi come over a slight hill just as they reach Salida, making the intersection even more dangerous, he said.
“I see people speeding though here all the time,” Flerry said. “No one even thinks of braking in this intersection.”
Police had thought the driver of the SUV, James Brooks, was driving drunk. But the 61-year-old’s blood-alcohol content registered 0.075 percent on a Breathalyzer, according to the police report, just under the 0.08 percent standard at which a driver is considered to be under the influence in Colorado.
Police Lt. Troy Edwards said Brooks also gave blood for more tests, which he said are more accurate. Authorities are waiting for those results before deciding what criminal charges if any Brooks should face.
Officers at the scene felt Brooks was under the influence and sent him to a detox facility after the accident, Edwards said.
He added, “It was enough to where they took a Breathalyzer.”
Staff writer Carlos Illescas can be reached at 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com.
