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Family and friends of 18-year-old Carlos Retana said they found him more than 24 hours after he went missing without much help from the Weld County Sheriff’s Office
KEENESBURG, Colo. — In his 18 years of life, Carla Ojeda said her nephew, Carlos Retana, touched many lives.
“A lot of people loved him,” Ojeda said. “A lot of people who will miss him, miss him dearly.”
Ojeda said her sister, Retana’s mom, called the Weld County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) after Retana didn’t come home from a friend’s house early Saturday morning. She said their family was left with more questions than answers.
“We didn’t know anything,” Ojeda explained. “My sister had to call the sheriff’s department because one of his friend’s had his last ping at the sheriff’s department, so we had to call. She didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t know what was going on and they had called and they said they didn’t have him there, that there had been an accident.”
WCSO said it responded to a single-car crash on Weld County Road 59 near Road 8 around 12:44 a.m. on Saturday, about 15 minutes after Retana was last seen. The sheriff’s office said a 911 call alerted them to the incident, but could not confirm who made the call due to the open investigation. Deputies said when they arrived on scene, no one was in the car.
When Ojeda and her family didn’t find Retana near the crash site, they widened their search to find him.
“A lot of his friends, his family [and] a lot of the community came together to help us look,” Ojeda said. “We looked a lot.”
After more than 24 hours since he was last seen, his family found him two miles from the initial crash with notable injuries.
“It was so unreal,” Ojeda said. “It couldn’t be real. He was only 18. He has his whole life ahead of him.”
Immediately, grief sunk in for his family and friends.
“Carlos he was everything to me,” shared Xavier Torres, Retana’s childhood friend. “He was my right-hand man. He was my partner in crime. He was my brother. He was my everything. I’d do everything with him. Share every moment, mad, sad, fight, he was just my brother.”
“He was a happy kid,” Ojeda said. “Always messing around, fooling around, with his little siblings. He has three on my sister’s side.”
Ojeda said they were only able to find him with the help of K-9s from members of the community. They said they felt let down by WCSO’s response.
“There’s a lot of questions,” Ojeda said. “We’re confused why they didn’t let us know there had been a car accident. They had his phone, they had his wallet, they had the car, the plates, [but] why weren’t we notified? The minute we would have been notified, we would have came out here looking for him if nothing else was going to be done. We would have came out.”
Torres agreed with Ojeda, believing more could have been done by law enforcement.
“We’re thankful for the community, especially the people that let us use the K-9s because the authorities were not much help in the incident of my friend,” Torres said, through tears. “I love you, bro. I love you so much, bro.”
WCSO said its patrol team responded to Ojeda’s family and their discovery of Retana around 5 p.m. Sunday. Deputies said they used a drone to search the area of the crash but did not find anything. The sheriff’s office explained a K-9 was not used because the area of the crash was contaminated by the scent of all the people searching for Retana.
The sheriff’s office said due the active investigation, it could not confirm if Retana was the only occupant in the car, if deputies were in possession of the items Ojeda mentioned or at what point deputies were alerted to the fact that Retana had been involved in a car crash.
WCSO said the coroner is in the process of determining a final cause and manner of death.
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