A Colorado family is pleading for answers and accountability after they say a beloved grandfather was killed near his home in Adams County because of cars street racing.

“He didn’t deserve to be hit like that,” said Anthony Herrera.

Herrera says 63-year-old Joseph Zamora Hernandez was his wife’s grandfather. He was also a man who showed selflessness in the community he helped cultivate at the Delux RV Park off Federal Boulevard.

“He has lived here for 15 years and out of the 15 years, he has fed the homeless. He had Thanksgiving dinner for them every year,” said Herrera. He took care of a lot of women that were on drugs [and] tried to get them off of drugs.”

“Everyone knew him. He was the guy always willing to jump in and help out,” said Celeste Tanner, who part-owns and helps operate the RV park.

However, Hernandez’s life of giving back and serving his community in unincorporated Adams County came to a screeching halt last month.

“To just know that he walked his dogs every day, and he’s just on the sidewalk and all of a sudden he’s gone, that’s a really tough moment,” said Tanner.

“I’m still shaken up about the whole thing,” said Herrera.

A spokesperson for Colorado State Patrol tells CBS Colorado Hernandez was struck and killed on April 7 by a car at Federal Boulevard and West 55th Avenue following a conflict between two cars driving northbound. The incident happened at around 7:45 

p.m. One vehicle swerved to avoid a collision and struck Hernandez on the sidewalk. Only the car that struck Hernandez stayed on the scene.

“Right around the time he got hit, he would walk his dogs before bed. That was his routine. he was a routine guy,” said Herrera.

Nearly a month later, Herrera says there is more to his grandfather’s death. Surveillance video shared by a nearby business captured the moments before the crash. Two cars can be seen driving northbound at high speeds. Herrera says they appear to be racing.

In another video taken from one of the homes at the trailer park, you can see as the white car screeching just before crashing into Hernandez.

“He flew another 20 feet into the sign,” said Hernandez, pointing to the sign for the RV park.

Herrera and other residents in the area say racing is becoming more and more of a problem on this stretch of road.

“It’s really concerning honestly. We fully support any way to kind of promote the traffic safety on Federal Boulevard,” said Tanner.

Herrera not only wants to see more safety changes to prevent racing, but he also hopes police can hold those who killed his grandfather accountable.

Everybody needs to be witnesses to more of this [racing]. It needs to stop. It’s not just this accident. There’s a lot of people dying,” said Herrera. This tragedy can be prevented if other people see it and humble themselves, as well, and not do this kind of racing, because it’s dangerous.”

Colorado State Patrol says they are still investigating this crash and looking at aggressive driving as a possible cause.

The family is hoping more people will speak up if they were witnesses to the incident and can confirm that street racing was involved or have information on the other car who fled the scene.

Is there still hope for decency in disagreement?

This week, on campuses from UCLA to Columbia to Auraria here in Colorado, the wave of anti-Israel protests has again demonstrated the far left in America has little concern for who or what it abuses or destroys. 

Will Colorado’s civic and higher education leaders — near-all liberals — stand for decency, enforce the law and allow students who just want to peacefully complete the semester the right to do so? Will they enforce the boundaries that allow for discourse without disorder? 

Other liberals have done so. Will Colorado cower and coast, tolerating what cannot be tolerated? 

The Auraria Campus is home to three universities — the University of Colorado Denver, Metro State and the Community College of Denver, with about 38,000 students spread across the three institutions.  

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Here is the challenge: The vast majority of Auraria students, many from working-class backgrounds and communities of color, are seeking to better themselves through higher education. And their path to progress is overshadowed by dozens of misguided squatters craving attention, soiling themselves (literally and figuratively), wallowing in the mud of their anti-Semitism. 

It is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. 

Here and elsewhere, Jewish students and faculty live in fear of harassment and physical violence. Unlike the snowflakes who are “triggered” when a professor “misgenders” them, these men and women deserve a real safe space. 

And unlike a century ago, we cannot sit in silence when anti-Semites spew their sewerage.

At the Auraria encampment, Denver Mayor Michael Johnston turned up — back from Detroit and the NFL Draft where he got himself on national television jumping about in a Broncos jersey. In his encampment walkabout, Johnston gave a weak plea to pretty please get off the lawn and hustled out of the way. Apparently, he has not returned. 

Gov. Jared Polis, who appoints the head of the state’s Department of Higher Education and the members of virtually all university governing boards, has been quiet. His self-congratulating new program touting ways to “disagree better” could be put to good use, in a setting more combustible than nice dinners with the governor of Utah. 

What we are wrestling with is not, at its core, a polite give-and-take about the contours of Middle East policy, debates that have consumed entire American presidencies for decades. It’s not new: Moses and Pharaoh had a similar and memorable dispute. 

What this is about is in a nation with robust and thorough constitutional protections for the right to assemble, protest and dissent… but those protections don’t extend to creating your own laws, or your own tent cities, or threatening disorder, assault or murder.

It is not hard. It just takes, to use a term anti-Israel protestors will not like, chutzpah. 

University of Florida President Ben Sasse, who has written excellent books about the demise of civility in American life, showed higher education can protect free speech without having to coddle and cuddle those who break the law. He had the university issue a statement explaining it is “not a daycare and we do not treat protestors like children.” 

If you cannot attend your university in safety, your government has failed you.  If you cannot go to a public event because local authorities are unable, or unwilling, to ensure your security, your government has failed you. 

The left condoned this behavior four years ago as violent mobs “redecorated” the Colorado Capitol and ignorantly tore down a non-Confederate statue in the name of racial healing. Elected leaders then were cowardly, afraid to separate legitimate debate from base violent vandalism. 

So here we are on the cusp of, as Yogi Berra said, “déjà vu all over again.”

What we are witnessing is a moral gangrene, rotting away the connective tissue of decency that links Americans, and gives life to robust discourse in the public square. It is a decay that cannot be left unaddressed, hoping it will just heal itself. In any spreading disease, strong and necessary intervention is needed. 

Leaders make their mark in tough times by standing tall in the arena. Many Democrats, particularly in New York, are rising to the occasion, asserting bedrock American values that disagreement and dissent must be rooted in decency. 

So far, in Colorado, we are being led by spineless pygmies.

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.

Students who are occupying Denver’s Auraria Campus quad to protest the war in Gaza rejected an offer from their schools. 

The offer would have donated thousands of dollars to the International Red Cross if they had taken down the tents. The offer was the school’s attempt to clear the growing encampment that’s been there for a week with graduation ahead. 

While the war in Gaza continues, students in Fort Collins, Pueblo, Denver and Boulder are demanding that schools cut academic and financial ties with groups that are connected to Israel’s military. That includes study abroad programs with the country, along with investments in companies that conduct business with the Israeli military.

“We’re in absolute support of your right to free speech, your right to assemble,” said Auraria Campus CEO Colleen Walker, who initially enforced the campus’s camping ban. 

CBS News Colorado Reporter Alan Gionet was at the campus moments after the students rejected the offer and says, nearly an hour after the deadline, no one took down a tent. 

A group of donors reportedly came forward with a nonpartisan humanitarian solutions that included $15,000 in the name of Students For Democratic Society donated to the International Red Cross, but only if the encampment was taken down by 5 p.m. Thursday, which was rejected swiftly by the students. 

“The students are well aware that they are in violation of our no camping policy. They have had 20, what I would call — successful protests since October. They followed the rules then; they’re well aware of those rules,” said Walker. “They also as a student organization they know how to rent out spaces here on campus. How to reserve spaces for their events. So they’re ignoring both of those aspects.” 

Members of the Students For Democratic Society had more calls for resistance and reiterated how they want their original demands fulfilled. 

Gionet also described the scene and he says that no police were on the scene after the deadline as the stalemate continues. 

Pro-Palestinian demonstration grows on Denver’s Auraria campus with graduation 1 week away