A jury awarded Megan Arneson’s 14-year-old son $65 million in a wrongful-death verdict after she died in a 2022 I-25 crash near Mead, Colorado. State investigators found the excavator was improperly loaded; its arm hit an overpass, and the boy is being raised by his grandparents.
On Aug. 8, 2022, Arneson and her then-10-year-old son were heading north on I-25 near Mead after a trip to Water World. Darnell Yingling, then an employee of Import Auto Inc., was hauling the excavator. Its extended arm struck the Weld County Road 34 overpass, sending concrete debris onto the northbound lanes and into Arneson’s car.
Yingling pleaded guilty in November 2023 to vehicular homicide-reckless driving. In January 2024, he was sentenced to four years in community corrections and 300 hours of community service. Attorneys for Import Auto called the crash a tragic accident and said the company had no other incidents in more than 35 years of business.
