In the five years they have lived at the intersection of Colo. 14 and Weld County Road 31, Brad and Sheila Barker have seen two people die and several people suffer serious injuries in car crashes, all essentially in their front yard.
After the most recent fatal crash — which claimed the life of 49-year-old Donald Swets last Friday morning — the Barkers said they wanted to voice their concern that the intersection is dangerous, and they hope officials will consider some kind of solution. County officials recognize that intersection for having a high number of crashes, but they say it’s well below the most dangerous ones in the county.
“I’m just so sad,” Sheila Barker said.
An 18-year-old foreign exchange student from Japan who is living with the Barkers was headed to do some birthday shopping on Friday, and she was parked at the intersection just west of Ault when the crash occurred. The Barkers said she watched a Pontiac northbound on Weld 31 pass a parked truck and hit Swets’ Ford pickup as he was travelling west. They said had Swets’ pickup not been in the path, the girl and her friend would likely have been victims in the crash.
Donald Swets was known in the community as the inheritor of the , created by his father, William Swets. The sculptor created giant metals works from machine parts, including a dinosaur and a spider.
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