{"id":799082,"date":"2019-09-02T11:56:05","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T17:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=370919"},"modified":"2019-09-03T12:42:58","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T18:42:58","slug":"victims-of-colorado-highway-9-crash-identified-as-summit-county-residents-ben-mitton-niki-gough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/victims-of-colorado-highway-9-crash-identified-as-summit-county-residents-ben-mitton-niki-gough\/","title":{"rendered":"Victims of Colorado Highway 9 crash identified as Summit County residents Ben Mitton, Niki Gough"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Ben Mitton, left, and Niki Gough<\/strong>
Facebook<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

DILLON \u2014 Family members have identified Ben Mitton and Niki Gough as the victims of Friday\u2019s head-on crash on Colorado Highway 9 near Blue River<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Laurie Richardson, Mitton\u2019s aunt, remembered Ben on Monday as kind, caring and independent.<\/p>\n

\u201cBen was a very kind soul, always in a good mood,\u201d Richardson said. \u201cHe was happy. He was friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitton, 41, and his girlfriend, Gough, were killed when a suspected drunken driver hit their vehicle, causing it to roll. Mitton and Gough were ejected from the vehicle and died from their injuries. The woman who allegedly caused the crash was arrested and charged with vehicular homicide, DUI and failure to drive in a designated lane.<\/p>\n

A fourth generation Coloradan, Mitton was born in 1978 in Central City, back when mining \u2014 not gambling \u2014 was the dominant business in town.<\/p>\n

Mitton was the only child of David Mitton and Jeri Haskell and was raised primarily by his father in Colorado Springs before spending his teen years with his mother in Alaska.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was a little bit of a wanderlust,\u201d Richardson said about her younger sister, Jeri, who died of breast cancer seven years ago.<\/p>\n

In Alaska, Mitton met and married his high school sweetheart, Gloria, and the couple had a son, Jasper, now 21 with a son of his own.<\/p>\n

The couple returned to Colorado Springs to raise Jasper, and Mitton found work in construction as a subcontractor.<\/p>\n

While in Colorado Springs, Mitton\u2019s mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he cared for her in the final years of her life, something his aunt admitted could not have been easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sister could be very difficult,\u201d Richardson said while chuckling at memories of her younger sister.<\/p>\n

Throughout his life, Mitton always made time to head to his happy place: the mountains.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis most favorite thing to do was to go to the mountains and be in the mountains,\u201d Richardson said. \u201cFour-wheeling, going to the mountains, going camping, spending time outdoors in the mountains \u2014 those were his favorite things to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Niki Gough, left and Ben Mitton<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

After Mitton and his wife split, he had been dating Gough for the past year or so, Richardson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really like her. We thought Ben was very fortunate because she was a wonderfull young lady,\u201d Richardson said.<\/p>\n

Gough had three children of her own, ranging in age from teens to young adults.<\/p>\n

After hearing about the circumstances of the crash, Richardson said she was very frustrated and angry but admitted \u201cnone of us are without fault.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richardson was planning to head to Colorado on Monday to help with the many details surrounding the sudden deaths and to support her nephew Jasper and his son, Oliver, who turned 3 on Saturday, one day after the crash.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Mitton, left, and Niki GoughFacebook DILLON \u2014 Family members have identified Ben Mitton and Niki Gough as the victims of Friday\u2019s head-on crash on Colorado Highway 9 near Blue River. Laurie Richardson, Mitton\u2019s aunt, remembered Ben on Monday as kind, caring and independent. \u201cBen was a very kind soul, always in a good mood,\u201d Richardson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-799082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 21:45:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799101,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799082\/revisions\/799101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}