Berthoud teens' accident case delayed

Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News

Thursday, June 7, 2007

LOVELAND — A prosecutor asked today for additional time to investigate several issues in the January car crash that cost two Berthoud teenagers their legs.

It was not clear what prompted the move, but it came less than three weeks after court filings raised the specter that the two boys had been drinking before the accident on Jan. 15.

Before a brief hearing today in Larimer County court, Deputy District Attorney Joshua Ritter huddled with John Chanin, the attorney for the teenager who crashed into the two boys, in a conference room.

Then Ritter stepped before Judge Christine Carney and asked for a 30-day continuance.

"There are a few issues the people are still investigating," Ritter said.

Michelle Berra graduated from Berthoud High School last Saturday along with one of the two boys who lost his legs in the accident, Tyler Carron. He and Nikko Landeros, the other teenager injured in the accident, have been the subject of numerous news stories chronicling their efforts to come back from their horrific injuries.

Carron walked on prosthetic legs with the aid of trekking poles as he received his diploma. Landeros graduates in 2008.

Carron was driving Landeros and three other friends home from a dance on Jan. 15 when his Isuzu Trooper sustained a flat tire. They stopped on a county road — a state trooper later determined they were in the middle of the southbound lane — and were behind the vehicle, preparing to change the tire, when Berra's Toyota Land Cruiser smashed into them.

Berra told investigators that she was momentarily distracted by a vehicle that pulled up behind her and that she didn't see the Isuzu until an instant before the collision.

On May 18, Berra's attorneys filed a motion in court asserting that they'd obtained medical records showing that Carron and Landeros had been drinking.

Ritter did not comment after the hearing. Chanin made it clear he welcomed the move.

"We are gratified that the district attorney's office is taking another look at this case," Chanin said in a hallway in the Loveland courthouse, flanked by Berra, who turned 18 in May, her parents and her younger brother.

Chanin was asked about the specific nature of the ongoing investigation but declined to comment.

"Until the district attorney completes the review of this case, we're going to let the process run its course," he said.

A separate investigation is being conducted by the Thornton Police Department to determine whether a commander there, Lori Moriarty, violated policy by involving herself in the investigation. Moriarty, who is identified in Colorado State Patrol documents as an aunt of Tyler Carron's, was at the scene when investigators re-enacted the collision, videotaping it, spoke with witnesses, and, at one point, questioned the conclusions of a trooper that the Isuzu was stopped in the roadway, not on the shoulder.