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Two men in their 70s dead after airport runway test drive crash

Two men are dead after test driving a car on an airport runway.

Credit: Google Maps
Central Colorado Regional Airport (Photo: Google)

Two men in their 70s are dead after a test drive gone wrong on an airport runway.

The Chaffee County Sheriff's Office says they got a call of a vehicle crash at Central Colorado Regional Airport in Buena Vista at around 12:30 Friday afternoon.

They found wreckage about 650 feet from the south end of the runway. Both people in the car were dead.

Investigators determined the two men had been test driving the 2016 Dodge Challenger Hellcat with the airport's permission. The driver, 71-year-old Lynd Fitzgerald of Colorado Springs, and his passenger, 76-year-old Roger Lichtenberger from San Marcos, California were going at a high rate of speed down the runway, then went another 314 feet off the runway before going airborne over a ravine.

After the car hit the ground, it went airborne again, flipping end over end over another ravine before coming to rest on its wheels.

Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze says he believes Fitzgerald was simply going too fast and misjudged how much room he had left on the runway.

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