BULLSHIT. Ask me how I really feel?

Driver in fatal crash hadn't been drinking, family says
By Chris Osher, Yesenia Robles and Kirk Mitchell
The Denver Post
Posted: 06/13/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
Updated: 06/13/2010 01:15:19 AM MDT

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The last time Heydi Margarita Hau Chi talked to her family, she still was celebrating her 26th birthday and laughing.

At 1:30 a.m. Friday, Hau Chi called her sister, Ariely Hau Chi, saying she was in a restaurant and would be home soon.

"She was happy. She didn't sound drunk," Ariely Hau Chi said. "I heard a guy in the background laughing with her, but then she just said, 'OK, I'll see you later.' "

Two hours later, Hau Chi was dead. Police say her actions during those early morning hours triggered an accident that ultimately claimed her life and that of a 65-year-old retired postal worker. Three other people were seriously injured.

Less than an hour after fleeing a hit-and-run accident with a parked car, Hau Chi drove her black Nissan Sentra the wrong way on westbound Interstate 70. Her car smashed into a Volvo. The driver of the Volvo was killed when he stepped from his car and was struck by a semi.

Wheat Ridge police Lt. Wade Hammond said Hau Chi smelled of alcohol.

She had been stopped before for drinking and driving. Two years ago, on the same June 11 day, the day after her birthday, Hau Chi was arrested for drunken driving. She was convicted of driving while ability-impaired and sentenced to take an alcohol-education class.

Her family said that when Hau Chi left home Thursday night, the family had no cause for alarm. They said she had not been drinking.

Now they are trying to piece together the events leading up to the accident.

"Everything was normal. We never thought something like this was going to happen," said sister-in-law Wilma Hau.

Hau Chi spent much of Thursday evening celebrating her birthday with family at her home in Denver. At 11:30 p.m., relatives said, Hau Chi received a call and left.

Family members say they do not know who called and no friends have contacted them to say they were with Hau Chi.

Kerry Tucker, 29, said he was still awake in his bedroom when he heard a car race past his house on 46th Avenue about 2:45 a.m. The brakes screeched, Tucker recalled.

He looked out the window and saw a car had rammed into a car parked at the end of the dead-end street. Tucker ran outside.

Without hesitation, the driver, now believed by police to be Hau Chi, backed up, and the tires screeched again as the car tore off down Everett Street with no headlights.

The car that was hit belonged to the mother of Julie Gonzales, 37.

"She hit so hard it pitched my mother's car into a fence and pulled a cemented post out of the ground," Gonzales said.

Just before 3:30 a.m., Hau Chi took her fatal course on Interstate 70, going east in the westbound lane.

She ran head-on into the Volvo. When Woon D. Baek, 65, of Aurora, stepped from the Volvo, he was struck and killed by a semi. The truck then continued into Hau Chi's car, dragging it about 100 yards, authorities said.

The driver of the semi was too shaken to publicly discuss details, said Mike Doty of Texas-based Tenco Transportation, the trucking firm. The truck driver, from Fort Worth, Texas, was not injured, but his nerves remained on edge, Doty said.

The surviving passengers of the Volvo remained hospitalized, but were expected to make a full recovery, a friend and a family member said.