Good Samaritan comes forward in fatal crash

FARMINGTON — A Farmington man was identified Thursday as the Good Samaritan who comforted a 12-year-old boy at a fatal crash scene on Dec. 11 near Bondad, Colo.

Jason Harris, an employee at C&J Equipment Manufacturing in Bloomfield, said he and his girlfriend, Marcy Hower, were headed toward the Trimble Spa and Natural Hot Springs in Durango, Colo., on the night of Dec. 11 when they came across the four-car pileup on U.S. Highway 550 near the border between Colorado and New Mexico.

Harris said he and Hower were there before paramedics and went vehicle to vehicle to see what assistance they could offer.

"Everyone was basically the same," he said. "Beat up, but conscious."

But then Harris came across the 2013 Ford Focus driven by Jenny Luccous, a Fort Lewis College student and aspiring drama teacher who was on her way to help with a drama production when the crash occurred.

Harris said Luccous, 35, was dead in the front driver seat of the vehicle. Her son, Dawson, was sitting outside the vehicle with two broken limbs.

"He was screaming for his mom to wake up, and I just told him, 'She's OK. She is just stuck,'" Harris said.

Harris wrapped the boy in an old Sacramento Kings blanket his girlfriend kept in the car, and they waited for paramedics to arrive.

"It seemed like forever," Harris said. "It had to have been 20 minutes or 30 minutes. It's such a bad spot."

The boy's father, Dakota Powers, sent an open letter to The Daily Times on Sunday thanking the unknown Good Samaritan who had comforted his son. Powers offered the blanket back in the letter, but Harris said the boy could keep it.

"I was just there at the right time," Harris said. "I didn't do anything special."

Powers said he was also grateful to the fire, emergency medical services and law enforcement personnel who assisted at the crash scene.

"While the final outcome was not what anyone would have wished, you were there, and you did make a positive difference in the lives of at least four patients and their families on that cold December night," Powers wrote in the letter.

A GoFundMe page was created Saturday to help pay for Luccous' funeral expenses. According to an update posted Wednesday, Luccous will be buried in Midland, Texas.

Steve Garrison covers crime and courts for The Daily Times. He can be reached at 505-564-4644.