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Two septuagenarian friends speed-testing a sky blue Dodge Challenger Hellcat at the Central Colorado Regional Airport in Buena Vista were killed after rocketing off the end of a runway and sailing across a ravine, authorities said Sunday night.
The men had permission to use the runway, Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze said. And they likely were moving faster than 100 miles per hour.
The 2016 Challenger Hellcat driven southbound down the runway Friday by Lynd Fitzgerald, age 71, of Colorado Springs, with Roger Lichtenberger, 76, of San Marcos, Calif., in the passenger seat kept moving off the runway for another 314 feet, sheriff’s investigators found.
Then it went through the air over a ravine before hitting the ground. The car bounced back into the air again, flipped end over end over a second ravine, and landed on its wheels, the investigators determined.
Chaffee County Sheriff’s deputies, Buena Vista police and Colorado State Patrol troopers raced to the scene. They found the wrecked car 650 feet beyond the south end of the runway. They tried to give the men first aid.
Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
Chaffee County deputies investigated with help from the state patrol.
“They were just test-driving this car. They went a little too fast. I don’t want to surmise. … They probably got to the end of the runway and, at that speed, didn’t realize they were there so fast. And they lost control. It was just too high a speed and they got to the end of the runway,” Spezze said.
Monday morning Spezze said investigators found skid marks near the end of the runway. He did not know the length of the marks.
probably went out of camera range with a runway exit like that.
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