Hayley MIll, driver accused of running down cyclists in Jefferson County, says she had seizure

The driver accused of intentionally running down two cyclists in a hit-and-run in Jefferson County last month says it wasn’t a deliberate act and believes she had a seizure while behind the wheel.

Hayley Mill, 38, was arrested four days after the June 19 crash on U.S. 40 near Evergreen. She’s being held on $1 million bond and is charged with 11 criminal counts, including two counts apiece of first-degree assault, vehicular assault and leaving the scene of an accident.

Lisa Ludwig, 61, and Michael James Will, 60, both suffered severe injuries after being struck, with Ludwig spending more than two weeks in a coma before regaining consciousness last week. Both were members of the Team Evergreen cycling club.

Multiple witnesses told Jefferson County sheriff’s investigators that they saw the driver of a Ford Escape, later identified as Mill, drive toward the two cyclists at a high rate of speed in what they felt was a deliberate act, according to an arrest affidavit.

One witness “described the vehicle’s movement as similar to road rage” and said he could not be “more sure” that what happened was intentional, according to the affidavit. Another witness told sheriff’s officials the driver seemed to accelerate toward the cyclists.

But Mill, in a phone interview with The Denver Post from the Jefferson County jail, said she’s not a “bicyclist-hating person” and did not deliberately drive into the cyclists.

“I would like the biking community — and, more so, the two victims — to know that this was an accident and that I’m so sorry,” she said. “…It’s crazy to me that people would think I have a grudge against bicyclists or anything like that.”

Mill said she believes she had a seizure while driving that day.

Having struggled with drugs since she was 10 years old, Mill said she was about 48 hours sober from opioids on the day of the crash. She said she has a “documented history” of seizures when trying to get sober, and in the two-day period leading up to the crash, she had at least two.

She was returning from Black Hawk, Mill said, and though she knew she’d had seizures recently, kept telling herself, “I just need to make it down the mountain, I just need to make it down the mountain.”

“I wish I could rewind the clocks and never get in my car,” she said.

Recounting the crash itself, Mill said she remembers coming to a stop at a stop sign, becoming unconscious after suffering what she believes was a seizure, and then waking to the sound of someone banging on her window.

Startled by the people knocking, Mill said she sped off, reminded of the aggression she’s suffered throughout her life for being a transgender woman. “I came out as trans when I was a teenager. I’ve been randomly attacked for this throughout my past,” she said.

Mill said she pulled into a parking lot about a quarter mile up the road, where three men came running to her car, filming her with their phones. Startled a second time, Mill said she sped off again and called her ex-boyfriend, Josh Nursall, to come and pick her up when her vehicle overheated.

In a separate interview, Nursall said he advised Mill to turn herself in to police. He said she “wants to take accountability, but doesn’t want to be charged with something she didn’t do.”