Editor:
On Aug. 28, we lost another young person to a tragic hit-and-run accident. Shane Hale, 19, was hit near 120th and Peoria on Saturday night and left in a ditch to die. A passerby found his body and called for help, but Shane did not make it. I live less than half a block from where this happened and yet did not hear or see anything.
I do not know Shane or his parents, but I do know about the loss of a child and it is absolutely the most devastating thing any human being can experience. It is not the natural order and changes every day and every moment of the rest of your life. There is no getting over it.
My frustration is that out here in Henderson we have stoplights, RTD bus stops, a high school, a middle school, an elementary school, parks, a beautiful new church, hundreds of newer homes in subdivisions and homes on acreages. Some of us have been annexed into Brighton and the rest of them into Commerce City.
What don’t we haven? We don’t have sidewalks.
It is expected that these children who walk to the schools every day and those who get on and off the bus or those who simply want to take a walk, should just walk on the side of the road. If you have not been out on 120th, it is a very major road with trucks, and traffic racing by 24 hours a day. 120th is the main road used to get to the airport from the Thornton/Northglenn area and connects anyone using Highway 85 over to the new county building as well as the airport. Peoria is just as busy most of the time and connects 104th Avenue to 120th. At night, they use Peoria as a race track as teens know that is seldom patrolled.
Again, part of it is in Commerce City and part in Brighton, thus nobody pays attention to it until they have to. Shane was hit on the Brighton side of the street.
Winter, summer, spring and fall, the children have to walk along the edge of the road, through the snow and ice and in the puddles of mud left behind. They are splashed, nearly hit and at risk at every moment of the journey to school. When I ask how to get sidewalks put in, nobody gives me a straight answer. Sometimes I have heard it is up to Commerce City and sometimes heard it is up to Brighton. The schools are in Brighton 27J, so who really knows?
I am asking that we all put some effort into getting one city or the other to provide sidewalks so that our young people do not have to walk on the edge of the road and risk being hit. I watch this almost happen on a daily basis and it is very alarming. I drive my grandchild to school and see those kids teetering on the edge of the pavement, hoping that the gust from a passing truck does not knock them over.
If you put in a school or two or other amenities, the infrastructure needs to include sidewalks.
Dee Durland