Woman hit and killed at memorial for motorcycle crash victim

A woman died after she was hit by a car while attending a roadside memorial for a friend who died in the same place a year earlier in Colorado, local media reports.

Members of the Windsor community had gathered at Eastman Park Drive to commemorate the life of Billy Thompson, who died on April 2, 2021 in a motorcycle crash, KDVR reported.

The attendees were releasing balloons into the air when several of them were hit by a westbound Jeep Cherokee, CBS Denver reported. One woman, Jessica Evans, died at the scene, KDVR reported.

The crash happened just after 6:30 p.m. The vehicle was driven by a 23-year-old woman, who is cooperating with police in an investigation, the Greeley Tribune reported.

The other pedestrians who were hit suffered minor injuries, according to the outlet.

“There is just something bad about that road,” David Schwartztrauber, Thompson’s uncle, told CBS Denver. “I don’t understand how this even happened.”

Schwartztrauber and his wife told the outlet that Evans was a recent cancer survivor and had been planning to marry her fiance this summer in the Bahamas.

There were about 13 people at the memorial at the time of the crash, which happened at around the same time that the accident that killed Thompson did, KDVR reported.

“I’ve never heard of it happening,” Kathryn Schwartztrauber told the outlet. “And I hope that I never hear about it happening again.”

The Windsor Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.