Charges have been filed against the driver involved in a fatal crash with former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Charles McMillan in September.
Nadia Lopez has pleaded not guilty to speeding, careless driving and failure to maintain a traffic lane.
Lopez was arraigned July 8. A hearing is scheduled for August in Los Alamos Magistrate Court. Lopez’s attorney did not have a comment about the charges or upcoming hearing.
Many question Los Alamos’ willingness, ability to address safety issues (copy)
Charles McMillan
On Sept. 6, McMillan, 69, died from injuries suffered in a head-on crash with Lopez as he drove east on East Road. A crash report states McMillan’s wife, a passenger in the vehicle, told police Lopez’s car crossed the center line and crashed into them. There was no driver error on McMillan’s part, the report stated.
McMillan became the lab’s 10th director in 2011. The physicist retired in 2017 and was succeeded by Terry Wallace.
The winding mountain road to the lab — where two-thirds of the workforces commutes — has been the focus of traffic safety initiatives after crashes and reports of unsafe driving.
In February 2024, Santa Fe resident and LANL chemist Philip Leonard was killed in a three-vehicle collision on N.M. 501. The week after, two people were hospitalized following a four-vehicle crash on N.M. 502.
The U.S. Department of Energy installed a handful of traffic cameras on East Jemez Road in an effort to reduce reckless driving. At a Los Alamos County Council meeting in September, National Nuclear Security Administration Los Alamos field office manager Ted Wyka said speed cameras had been installed on-site at LANL and employees would be disciplined for bad driving after a series of “complaints, near misses, accidents, injuries, and, unfortunately, fatalities.”
In May, the County Council voted in favor of a bill to increase fines for cellphone use while driving.
A 2023 map created by the University of New Mexico’s Traffic Research Unit shows crashes were concentrated around N.M. 502, the main road to reach the lab. A 2022 regional report by the state Department of Transportation found driver inattention was responsible for 37% of the crashes in the county.
“I hear from employees that the most fearful part of their day is driving up that hill and going home downhill,” Wyka said at the September meeting.