Three people were killed after a Jeep on an off-road tour rolled off a cliff on a remote trail.
The fatal accident happened at Imogene Pass in Ouray County, Colorado on Monday. The victims included two tourists from Arizona and a local tour guide who was driving the vehicle.
The victims were identified as Diana Robles, 28, Ofelia Figueroa-Perez, 60, and Don Fehd, 72.
The 2022 Jeep Gladiator was driving on Ouray County Road 361 towards the town of Ouray when it lost control and drifted off a cliff wall, Colorado State Police said.
After dropping 110 feet and hitting the ground, the Jeep rolled down an embankment for another 142 feet near the Canyon Creek.
First responders found the vehicle lying on its roof. Its two occupants, Robles and Figueroa-Perez, were both dead.
Fehd was thrown from the Jeep after it fell off the cliff.
The tour was scheduled to begin at 8.00am on Monday. Investigators believe the crash happened between 11.00am and 12.00am as the group was returning.
The incident remains under investigation. ‘At this point there isn’t any one thing that has shown a cause for going off the roadway,’ the Colorado State Police told Metro.co.uk.
The Jeep was owned and operated by Colorado West Jeeps, a tour company in Ouray, Colorado State Police said.
Fehd was employed as a tour guide at Colorado West Jeeps, the Ouray County Plaindealer reported.
Robles and Figueroa-Perez were both from Yuma, Arizona. Robles was Figueroa-Perez’s neice, and they both worked as nurses at Yuma Regional Medical Center.
Another family member, Diana Robles, shared a memorial for the two healthcare workers on Facebook.
‘We as a family want to thank everyone who has shown any act of love, phone call, text, messenger, who have brought food, water, Thank you!’ she wrote. ‘We know they are in God’s merciful hands, because they as nurses had hands that healed every life they touched.’
This is the second fatal crash to occur at Imogene Pass in one week. On September 5, a man was killed and a woman injured when an ATV rolled off a trail end, the Montrose Daily Press reported.
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