News from across the nation, by Don Early and Aaron Martinez, Basin Life Magazine
Near Denver, Colorado, a semitruck driver today is facing homicide charges after multiple people were killed in a fiery crash involving 28 vehicles on a Colorado highway.
Officials have not named the specified number of people killed, but said multiple died Thursday on Interstate 70 in Lakewood, about 8 miles west of Denver. Six people were taken to hospitals in unknown conditions, officials said Friday. There is no indication this was an intentional act, officials said.
The accident occurred Thursday about 4:30 p.m. when a semitrailer traveling at a high rate of speed slammed into several stopped cars during a traffic jam, police said.
Four semis and 24 cars were involved in the crash, officials said Friday.
Joshua McCutchen told “Good Morning America” he noticed a semi barreling down the emergency lane before he saw fire, smoke and explosions.
“I’ve never seen that many cars and that much destruction and fire,” he said. “It was just complete chaos.”
The driver of one of the semis is being charged with multiple counts of vehicular homicide. The driver, who has not been identified, was not seriously injured, officials said. So far, tere’s no evidence of drugs or alcohol, officials said.
It’s day two of Former Vice President Joe Biden’s early presidential campaign, as he heads for Iowa for the weekend with a travel itinerary leaving little doubt about his strategy in early voting states.
Biden’s one-two Iowa-South Carolina punch for the next week underscores the three-time Democratic presidential candidate’s need to finish near the top in the lead off Iowa caucuses as a way of building momentum for South Carolina, home to the first Southern primary.
The former vice president has a combination of strengths and enduring relationships in South Carolina that could seal him as the front-runner heading into the later contests.
Early polls have shown him as the most preferred candidate despite his absence and the robust campaigns of more than a dozen other contenders that are already months underway.
Biden’s relationship with South Carolina dates back decades, to his enduring friendships with fellow long-serving senators such as Fritz Hollings, whom Biden eulogized last week in Charleston, near where Biden and his family have vacationed regularly.
Biden also has deep relationships with the state’s African American voters — who comprise a large swath of its Democratic electorate — as well as inroads with many of the retired military veterans who have come from all over to retire in the state.
More than a thousand migrants broke out of a detention center in southern Mexico on Thursday evening, authorities said, in another sign of how a surge in arrivals has stretched the country’s resources to the limit. More than half of the roughly 1,300 migrants later returned to the Siglo XXI facility in the border city of Tapachula in Chiapas state, but about 600 are now unaccounted for, the National Migration Institute said in a statement.
Migrants from Cuba, who make up the majority of the people being held at the center, were largely behind the breakout, the institute added. Also in the group are Haitians and Central Americans among those who fled the facility, which has been crammed with people.
Mexico has returned 15,000 migrants in the past 30 days, officials have said, amid pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to stem the flow of people north.
Early this week Trump reiterated threats to close part of the U.S.-Mexico border if Mexico doesn’t block what described as a new caravan of migrants headed north.
The majority of migrants moving through Mexico are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but Cubans are also joining in large numbers. More than 1,000 people from Cuba are now in Chiapas, according to Mexican officials.