Challenger Hellcat Turns Deadly At Colorado Airport
A fun day with some high speed driving went very wrong as two friends died when their Dodge Challenger Hellcat shot off the end of an airport runway over the weekend.
The first thing I’m sure everyone will focus on are the men’s ages; Lynd Fitzgerald was 71 and Roger Lichtenberger was 76. Sure they weren’t the youngest, but I have seen a LOT worse in my day, so I’m going assume their ages weren’t necessarily the cause of the tragedy.
The pair had been given permission to use the 8,300 foot runway at Central Colorado Regional Airport in Buena Vista. At the time of the accident, the car was likely moving at over 100 MPH, and after leaving the runway, the car continued for another 300 feet before flying over two ravines and landing 650 FT from the end of the runway.
The men were driving a 2016 Dodge Challenger Hellcat and had permission to use the runway https://t.co/4NzLp49PDS
— The Denver Post (@denverpost) September 11, 2017
Chafee County Sheriff John Spezze says:
“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.
I’ve never seen anything like it. They had permission to be there. There were no laws broken.”
The only silver lining (if you can call it that) to come out of this tragedy was that the gentlemen did this in a private setting and no one else was hurt.
