WESTCLIFFE, COLO. -- A construction worker and semi truck driver are both dead after a crash in a construction zone Tuesday afternoon.
Colorado State troopers said the driver of a tractor trailer hit a line of cars stopped in a construction zone on Highway 69 near Westcliffe around 1:15 p.m. Tuesday.
A line of five cars were stopped for a flag man in the northbound lane when the tractor trailer, going north, hit the last car in line. The semi then went off the right side of the road into a ditch, then tried entering the highway again. When it came back onto the road, it hit the first car in line as well as the flag man, 20-year-old Jeffery Mosher.
Mosher, a Coal Creek, Colo. resident, died at the scene.
When the semi re-entered the highway, it flipped, spilling a load of 40-foot poles onto the road. The driver, 57-year-old Robert White from Temple, Texas, was thrown from the truck and also died.
Troopers said White's inattentiveness is the likely cause of the crash, but it is still under investigation.
Two people in the back car and one in the front car that the truck hit were taken to hospitals with various injuries. Cars two, three and four in the line were not hit.
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