“My world had blown up in front of me”

Survivor recounts deadly I-70 crash

Leslie Maddox was sitting in traffic on Interstate 70 last week on her way home from work, hoping to catch a fitness class. She decided to call her daughter to catch up, putting her on speaker phone as she drove.

In a split second, a semitruck rammed into her, and she hit another car. There were explosions and black smoke surrounding her.

She was in excruciating pain — her arm was broken, with the bone poking in the skin, her nose was crushed and blood began pouring down her face.

“All I know is I’m sitting there laughing with my daughter (on speaker phone), and the next thing I know, my world had blown up in front of me,” she told The Denver Post on Wednesday.

Still, Maddox, a graphic designer at Red Rocks Community College, believes if even one thing had gone differently in the crash last week that caused a 28-car pileup on Interstate 70 and killed four men, she would likely not be alive. She also is grateful to all the people who rushed to help her and others hurt in the wreck caused by a semitrailer barreling down Interstate 70.

Maddox said police told her that her SUV was the first to be hit. The semitruck hit Maddox’s SUV, and she rammed into another truck after her car moved from the far right lane to the middle lane.

She was released from a hospital Saturday, two days after the crash that sent her in for surgery.

She doesn’t recall everything, but she does remember the pain.

She also remembers the people who helped her — a Red Rocks Community College student studying to be an EMT and another man, an ex-Marine, who carried her out of the car and into another vehicle until she could get to an ambulance.

The man who assisted her didn’t want to be identified, she said, but the EMT student, Meleia Harsch, is the reason Maddox got out of her car.

“My arm was in so much pain, it was hard for me to move,” she said.

But Harsch made sure she did. Maddox made sure to find out who she and the ex-Marine who saved her were after the crash. She found out that Harsch ignored her own injuries to help others, despite being pregnant and having two kids.

One of Harsch’s classmates created a GoFundMe account for her fellow EMT student. The post says Harsch jumped to aid others in the crash, not worrying about herself. She had just bought her Jeep two months before, and it was destroyed.

In the comments, Harsch thanked donors and said the crash caused her to lose her job.

Maddox said her heart goes out to the four victims who were

killed and their loved ones.

The one positive for Maddox: the helpers.

“It was horrible, but the bystanders and the way the community came together to help people was incredible,” she said.

Following the crash, reports of bystanders going out of their way to help victims spread, including the story of a homeless man who jumped into action when he saw what was going on, as reported by Fox31 Denver.

Red Rocks Community College commended the actions of Harsch and one of its physician assistants, Carol Von Michaelis.

Maddox believes truck drivers in Colorado need to be adequately trained. Still, there are a lot of questions about what happened to cause the crash, but ultimately, that’s the driver’s story, Maddox said.

Texas resident truck driver Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 23, was arrested for investigation of vehicular homicide after the crash. He is in jail on a $400,000 bond and will appear in court at 10 a.m. Friday in Jefferson County.

As Maddox reflects on the crash, she wants to remind people to always wear their seat belts and to value life and the people around them.

“Leave everything good,” she said. “Leave everything on a positive word.”