A hit-and-run accident at the corner of East 13th Ave and Washington St. late Monday night killed one person and took out the iconic corner facade of indie record store Wax Trax Records.
Two vehicles collided at about 11:20 p.m., Denver Police dispatch reported. One car rolled over and an occupant was trapped. The driver of one vehicle fled the scene but was apprehended, dispatch said.
“Some (guy) blew through a red lights, T-boned a woman, sent her over the barrier and into the front of our store,” longtime Wax Trax employee Dave Wilkins told Reverb on Tuesday morning. “She’s dead. At least no one else was here when it happened.”
Denver Police on Monday said that the victim was actually a 64-year-old male, Roland Stith, of Denver. Police also named the suspect, 28-year-old Johnny Lee Hockaday. He was later caught after witnesses identified him, and he’s being held on suspicion of vehicular homicide, driving under the influence and other traffic charges.
The Wax Trax entrance looked like a war zone this morning, Wilkins said. But the store still plans on being open by noon today.
“I wasn’t here at the very beginning,” he said. “By the time I got here, they’d done a fair amount of cleaning up. Out front is still broken glass and twisted metal. Everything came out –- the door frame and the metal and everything else.”
A cloud of sadness has set in on the block, which is made up of tight-knit local business that include Wax Trax, Kilgore Books, Beauty Bar, Jelly restaurant, Benny Blanco’s and FashioNation. But the news that police had apprehended a suspect seemed to make people feel better.
“At least they caught the jerk,” said Wilkins.
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Ricardo Baca is the founder and executive editor of , the co-founder of The UMS and an award-winning critic and journalist at The Denver Post.
