Victim in crash identified

BY NICOLE FORMOSA
summit daily news
September 5, 2007

Summit County, CO Colorado

SUMMIT COUNTY - Summit County Coroner Joanne Richardson has identified the victim of last Friday's fatal single-vehicle car crash near the high school as Eder Blises Cano Guerrero of Aurora.

Guerrero, 24, who was in the county for work, was killed Friday morning after crashing a 1992 Dodge Stealth into a field at the intersection of Swan Mountain Road and Hwy. 9.

Guerrero had apparently taken the car without permission from its owner, who was an acquaintance of Guerrero's, Richarson said. The two men had been hanging out the evening before the crash.

Guerrero was not wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from the vehicle when it rolled. Speed is considered a factor in the accident. Results from a toxicology test to determine whether alcohol was involved won't be available until next week, Richardson said.

It took Richardson four days to identify Guerrero due to the difficulty in tracing his real name because he was carrying false identification.

"That was pretty lucky because sometimes you just can't find them or it takes longer," she said.

Guerrero was an undocumented worker and had a falsified resident alien card that contained part of his name and part of another name.

Because he had a tattoo that read "Cano" she started the search using that name. Jail records from the Front Range came up with a possible match, but didn't have specifics on the man's tattoos so Richardson couldn't verify his identity.

Eventually, somebody with Colorado State Patrol was able to match the name to four addresses in Aurora. A man at one of the homes confirmed he was Guerrero's brother, Richardson said.

If victims have criminal records, they can sometimes be identified through an FBI fingerprint database, but it requires lifting prints from every finger of the body and that isn't always possible, Richardson said.

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