ALAMOSA– A tragic traffic accident in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday morning resulted in the death of seven horses on a stretch of highway between La Jara and Sanford in Conejos County.
According to Captain Nathan Lyons with the Colorado State Patrol, at 4:11 a.m. on Wednesday morning, two males were traveling on Highway 136 when their Dodge 2500 ¾-ton pickup truck hit a herd of seven horses who were in the middle of the road at Mile Marker 2.
Reading from a report submitted by troopers who arrived on the scene, Lyons reported that apparently a fence was down on property adjacent to the highway, and eleven horses had escaped from the pasture. Seven of the horses were in the road when they were struck.
The two occupants of the truck suffered non-serious injuries, which Lyons described as mainly “cuts and bruises from the impact” and were subsequently transported to a nearby hospital. The names and ages of the occupants were not included in the report Lyons was accessing.
The speed limit on that stretch of road is 65 miles per hour. Lyons said the report stated that excessive speed was not a factor in the accident and there was no indication that the driver of the vehicle was impaired.
Given the time the accident took place, Lyons said it was likely that, even if the highway was shut down, traffic was not delayed. As he described it, the owner of the horses came and “did what needed to be done” to remove the horses who had been killed while a tow truck removed the damaged pickup truck from the scene.
Captain Lyons said that there was nothing in the report to indicate that the other four horses were injured.
“It was just a very unfortunate thing to have happened,” he said, adding that “neither of the occupants in the truck were wearing a seatbelt” which likely contributed to their injuries.
