By Chhun Sun
The Gazette
CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — A retired Army colonel received an eight-year prison sentence Tuesday after he pleaded guilty in a drunken hit-and-run crash last year that killed a Colorado State Patrol trooper.
Eric Peter Henderson, 52, of Peyton was also ordered to complete five years of mandatory parole during his sentencing at the Douglas County courthouse in Castle Rock, court records show. Last month, Henderson admitted to felony charges of vehicular homicide while driving under the influence and tampering with physical evidence.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re a corporal or a colonel, welder or a war hero,” 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler, the lead prosecutor in the case, told The Gazette, “you drive drunk in this community, you hit somebody, especially a state trooper, you should expect to give up a good chunk of your freedom. That’s what happened here today.”
On the evening of Nov. 15, trooper Jaimie Jursevics, 33, was outside her patrol car, attempting to get a driver suspected of drunken driving to pull over on southbound Interstate 25, south of Castle Rock, when she was struck by a truck and killed.
Chris Samuelson, one of Henderson’s lawyers, told The Gazette that Jursevics was not wearing a protective vest, as required per State Patrol policy, while she was standing in the middle of the interstate trying to direct the driver with a flashlight.
According to his arrest affidavit, Henderson was driving home from a Denver Broncos game, where he consumed six beers. Henderson drove away for nearly a mile and was pulled over near the Spruce Mountain Ranch in Larkspur.
Henderson apologized to the Jursevics family and told the court that he did not know at the time that he hit a person.
After the crash, Brauchler said, Henderson maneuvered his truck around Jursevics’ body in the middle of the road and drove down the highway, pulling over to check the front of his vehicle. Henderson then asked his passenger, Craig Whitehill, what was left in a cooler in the truck, Brauchler said.
Samuelson said Whitehill, also a retired Army colonel, dumped two beers and a bottle opener on the side of the road. Whitehill was not prosecuted because he agreed to testify against Henderson, Samuelson said.
Samuelson called Henderson “a good man and a highly decorated solider” who was diagnosed with PTSD in 2013 after several combat tours.
At the time of her death, Jursevics had an 8-month-old daughter.
Her husband, D.J. Jursevics, said in a statement that “no sentence handed down in this case will ever be harsh enough or bring Jaimie back.”
Henderson retired from the Army in June 2013 after a 27-year career. At his last post, he was the chief of operations for the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command in Colorado Springs.
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