UPDATE (January 29, 2026): Reports identified the victim in the crash as 21-year-old Cobey Giovanni Copeland Jr. Additional details are unavailable. See the Commentary below for more.

Larimer County, CO — January 24, 2026, one person was killed and another was injured following a semi-truck accident at 4:47 a.m. along US Highway 287.

Investigators said that the crash happened in the area of the US 287 and West Country Road 54E intersection, west of Laporte.

According to officials, a 20-year-old California woman and a 21-year-old man were in a car going southbound along the highway. A semi-truck was reportedly on the wrong side of the road, and it crashed head-on into the car.

Due to the accident, the man in the car was killed. The driver had serious injuries. At this time, authorities are charging the semi-truck driver for vehicular homicide.

Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman

Getting on the wrong side of a highway is so egregious that most people reading about a wrong-way crash will rightfully suspect that alcohol was involved. Maybe that isn't what happened here, but something obviously had to go seriously wrong for a semi-truck driver not to realize they were on the wrong side of the road. This brings up important questions.

How long had the truck driver been behind the wheel? Are they an inexperienced driver? Were they given bad instructions for their route? Do they have a history of reckless behavior behind the wheel? Was the driver rushing to meet an unreasonable deadline? Did drugs contribute to the accident? Have authorities secured cellphone records and vehicle data? Does the truck have any cameras to pull video from?

It's important to know if authorities actually worked to answer these questions. Sometimes, they simply move on once there are charges to file. But not only can that leave a victim's loved ones with an incomplete story, it could let accomplices get off scot-free. In other words, even if it's clear who's responsible for an accident, victims and families need to know why it happened. That takes prompt and thorough investigations.