A 25 year old La Plata County man died Sunday in a snowmobile accident northeast of Bayfield.
La Plata County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Dan Bender identified the man as Trenton Maddux-Garcia.
According to Bender, Maddux-Garcia was on a snowmobile trip with a group near Beaver Meadows Road, north of U.S. Highway 160 near the La Plata County-Archuleta County line. About two miles up the road, his snowmobile ran into a locked Forest Service gate.
Bender said there was no cellphone service in the area, so members of the group rode back to an area of where they could call emergency responders, which they did around 11 a.m.
However, by the time emergency responders arrived, the man wasn’t breathing and was in cardiac arrest. According to Upper Pine River Fire Protection District Chief Bruce Evans, the survival rate for a person with traumatic cardiac arrest is less than 1 percent.
“We tried everything we could,” Evans said. “Everything is worth that 1 percent if you can get it.”
The man was taken to Mercy Regional Medical Center, but did not survive. According to Evans, Maddux-Garcia was the son of a full-time firefighter with the Los Pinos Fire Protection District.
“It is inevitable that as providers of Emergency Medical Services in a small town you will be witness to some horrific event to someone you know,” the Upper Pine River Fire Protection district wrote on its Facebook page. “Worse yet that it is someone who is part of our fire district family.”
