A Brush preschool teacher may have been text-messaging in the moments before she was killed in a single-vehicle crash on Interstate 76 early Thursday morning, the Colorado State Patrol said.
Megan Schneider, 23, of Fort Morgan, taught at the Thomson Primary School in Brush.
Trooper David Hall said she was about 6 miles west of Brush when she lost control of her truck.
Hall said Schneider’s 2005 Toyota pickup rolled 2 1/2 times. Schneider, who was not wearing a seat belt, was ejected from the vehicle. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators recovered Schnei der’s cellphone and determined that she sent a text message at 11 seconds after 7:25 a.m., Hall said.
The trooper said that the first 911 call reporting the accident was made by another motorist at 59 seconds after 7:25 a.m.
“We are not saying that texting and driving caused the accident,” Hall said. “We are investigating texting as a possible contributing factor.”
Since Dec. 1, text messaging — including e-mailing and tweeting — while driving has been illegal under state law.
Hall said investigators also think the vehicle’s speed and ice on the road may have contributed to the wreck.
“We may never know if she was physically texting when she crashed,” Hall said. “This is a terrible, terrible set of circumstances.”
Hall said the State Patrol does not have a lot of statistics on how often texting causes accidents because there are usually no eyewitnesses. Drivers involved in such accidents often are not truthful about what they were doing before the crash, he said.
Donna Howell, superintendent for the Brush School District, said that this was Schneider’s first year teaching in the district.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
