Toxic Gas Killed the 6 Who Died at Colorado Dairy Farm

Six people who died at a Colorado dairy farm this summer were exposed to hydrogen sulfide gas, authorities said Thursday. The Weld County coroner's office drew its conclusions from autopsies and toxicology tests. The deaths of five men and a teenager on Aug. 20 sent shockwaves through the rural communities in and around Keenesburg, 35 miles northeast of Denver, where emergency responders entered a confined space to recover the bodies. Authorities had immediately expressed concern that the deaths were linked to harmful gases, reports the AP.

The coroner's findings will factor into an investigation by federal workplace safety and health investigators into determining what happened at the industrial-scale dairy, owned by California-based Prospect Ranch, as well as the role of a dairy equipment contractor. Operators of the dairy and federal workplace safety authorities have said little about what went wrong, though the hazards of confined spaces on farms and dairies are a well-known and persistent cause of death in agriculture across the US.

All those who died in Colorado were Latino men, ranging in age from 17 to 50. Four of them, including the teenage high school student, were from the same extended family. "People are in shock. Everybody in the ranching and dairy community knows it's difficult, hard work and there are accidents," said the Rev. Thomas Kuffel, a priest at Catholic churches including Holy Family in Keenesburg. "But this is very foreign to them, in that accidents are typically one or two people."

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First responders from a rural fire district in Weld County were dispatched at around 6pm on Aug. 20 to Prospect Ranch. Alejandro Espinoza Cruz, of Nunn, was found dead along with his 17-year-old son, Oscar Espinoza Leos, and a second son, 29-year-old Carlos Espinoza Prado, of Evans. The Espinozas are related by marriage to another 36-year-old victim from Greeley—Jorge Sanchez Pena, according to Jolene Weimer, deputy county coroner for Weld County. The other two men—Ricardo Gomez Galvan, 40, and Noe Montañez Casañas, 32—lived in Keenesburg.