Federal workplace safety regulators penalize businesses over 6 deaths at Colorado dairy

Federal workplace safety regulators have issued citations and fines against three businesses for violations in the deaths of six people last year at a Colorado dairy.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Tuesday announced fines including penalties for failing to protect workers against hazardous gases against the dairy owner and a dairy service provider. The deaths of five men and a teenager on Aug. 20, 2025, sent shockwaves through the rural communities in and around Keenesburg, 35 miles (55 kilometers) northeast of Denver.

Previously, the Weld County coroner’s office determined from autopsies and toxicology tests that all the people who died were exposed to hydrogen sulfide gas.

Those autopsy reports gave little indication of the circumstances of the deaths, describing only an industrial accident in a confined space at a dairy farm.

In August 2025, federal regulators opened initial investigations of the dairy, owned by Prospect Ranch as well as Johnstown, Colorado-based Fiske Inc, whose subsidiary High Plains Robotics services dairy equipment and employed some of those who died.

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The hazards of confined spaces on farms and dairies are a well-known and persistent cause of death in agriculture across the U.S. — often from exposure to odorless and colorless noxious gases, or due to asphyxiation in closed spaces where oxygen has been depleted.

First responders from a rural fire district in Weld County were dispatched around 6 p.m. on Aug. 20 to Prospect Ranch and took their own safety precautions as they entered a confined space.

All those who died in Colorado were Latino, ranging in age from 17 to 50. Four of them, including the teenage high school student, were from the same extended family.

Alejandro Espinoza Cruz, of Nunn, was found dead along with his 17-year-old son Oscar Espinoza Leos and a second son, 29-year-old Carlos Espinoza Prado.

The Espinozas are related by marriage to a 36-year-old from Greeley who died — Jorge Sanchez Pena, according to the Weld County coroner’s office.

The other two men — Ricardo Gomez Galvan, 40, and Noe Montañez Casañas, 32 — lived in Keenesburg.

The remains of Montañez Casañas, a veterinarian who was employed under a U.S. visa, were repatriated to the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, according to the Mexican consulate in Denver.

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Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Morgan Lee, The Associated Press