A man who crashed his SUV into a semi-trailer in Garfield County on Monday morning told emergency responders airlifting him to medical care that he had killed his wife in an apartment.
Police officers in Carbondale investigating the man’s reports found a woman’s body — believed to be his wife — dead of what appeared to be knife wounds, authorities said.
The crash on Colorado 133 happened about 7:15 a.m. on Monday when the man’s Toyota 4Runner collided with the semi-trailer. He was being flown to a Grand Junction hospital when he allegedly admitted to the slaying.
Carbondale police say they found the body in an apartment on Cooper Place several hours after the crash.
Authorities said the residents in the apartment where the man said he killed his wife were unharmed.
Police began searching surrounding apartments and at about 4 p.m., they contacted a woman, later identified as the man and woman’s roommate, as she was arriving home.
While the roommate would not let officers search her apartment, she agreed to go check inside herself and found the body.
“Since yesterday it has been full of investigators,” said Javier Jiminez, who lives across the street from where the body was found. “Just a lot of activity. You don’t see that around this town, especially when you see the coroner pulling a body out of a house. You don’t see that everyday.”
Jiminez said he read about the SUV crash in the newspaper and recognized the Toyota involved as the one usually parked across from his house.
“I started to put the pieces together,” he said, adding that a couple in their 20s live in the apartment where the body was found.
Police said they were not immediately releasing the names’ of the suspect or victim.
“We’re waiting for an arrest warrant for the suspect,” Gene Schilling, Carbondale’s police chief, said. “We are waiting for notification of next-of-kin for the victim.”
Schilling said the woman’s body was found in an apartment she shared with her husband.
The man, whom police call a suspect, has been placed in protective custody at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction.
Photos from the wreck showed the SUV’s front end severely mangled. in Glenwood Springs reported the man rear-ended an empty cattle truck.
The last homicide in Carbondale happened in April 2003, police said.
