DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. – The husband of a Colorado state trooper hit and killed by a retired Army colonel who was driving drunk last November on I-25 near Castle Rock has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the colonel and the bar that served him.
Eric Henderson, 52, was sentenced in June to eight years in prison after he pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and tampering with evidence in the crash that killed 33-year-old trooper Jaimie Jursevics.
She was investigating a minor crash with another trooper near Plum Creek Parkway in Castle Rock in November 2015 when she was informed by dispatchers about a possible drunk driver in a pickup truck headed toward her.
Jursevics called the driver who reported the suspected drunk driver. The caller was still following the driver and told Jursevics he could see the lights on her vehicle as they approached her, according to an affidavit detailing Henderson's arrest.
"[The caller] could see the female trooper shining a flashlight toward the ground," the affidavit stated.
The driver in the pickup, later identified as the retired colonel Henderson, did not stop and the caller reported seeing the trooper's flashlight fly through the air.
The caller was still on the phone with Jursevics and heard her scream as she was hit by the oncoming truck.
Henderson kept driving and was arrested a few miles away.
"I killed a cop," Henderson later told detectives through tears, according to the affidavit. Prosecutors said he spent the day drinking at a Broncos game.
The lawsuit, which was filed by lawyers Oct. 25 in Douglas County District Court on behalf of Jursevics’ husband, Didzis, and daughter, Morgan, seeks both monetary and non-monetary damages, including lost future wages and “other contributions of pecuniary value” the trooper would have made to her husband and daughter.
The suit also implicates Brooklyn’s Bar, which it alleges served Henderson though he was “visibly intoxicated” and had difficulty standing. The suit says Brooklyn’s “may be held civilly liable for the death of Trooper Jursevics.”
Henderson retired from the Army in June 2013 after a 27-year career and was the chief of operations for the Space and Missile Defense Command in his final post.
The next hearing date on the suit has yet to be set. Read previous stories about the case here.
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