Another police officer is under investigation for an animal killing in Colorado — and the victim is a tad bit bigger than Chloe the dog. Boulder Police officials, in a statement that includes an apology, say that an officer shot and killed a bull elk and took it to another…
Yesterday, families of those who died in the Aurora theater shooting blasted Cinemark, owner of the site of the tragedy, for insensitively inviting them to an event timed with the theater’s reopening. The mother and stepfather of victim Jessica Ghawi joined others in signing a letter to the theater, expressing…
Accused Aurora theater shooter James Holmes was in court yesterday for a short hearing to determine whether lawyers were ready to proceed with what will likely be a revealing preliminary hearing next week. (They are; the hearing starts Monday, January 7 at 9 a.m.) After the hearing, we used the…
Pot is now technically legal in Colorado for recreational use — but smoking underage on a bus bound for this state most certainly is not. That was a tough lesson for a group of Ohio students who were caught with marijuana and other drugs on their way here for an…
This was not the holiday letter that families of the Aurora theater shooting victims wanted to receive. Two days after Christmas, the families of those killed on July 20 received a letter inviting them to return to the site of the massacre for a Cinemark reopening event. They’ve since responded…
An important hearing in the case of Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes will start Monday, January 7 at 9 a.m. This morning, prosecutors and Holmes’s defense attorneys told the judge in the case that they’re ready to proceed with the preliminary hearing, which is expected to reveal many more…
At 7 p.m. on December 18, Eric Garcia attacked a woman as she was walking to her car on West Colfax Avenue in Lakewood. She was “able to fight the male off and he fled,” Lakewood police say. Apparently not satisfied with his failed attempt, a mere twenty minutes later…
Just before the end of 2012, Nicholas Mitchell, Denver’s new independent monitor, released his first report to the public, covering discipline cases at the police and sheriff’s departments. The document from the city’s official watchdog, just the second person to hold the position, offers a glimpse into pending investigations of…
Update: Adams County District Attorney Don Quick announced this afternoon that Ezequiel Padilla-Villalobos, the 24-year-old who called 911 over the weekend, admitting he had killed a 14-year-old girl, is also facing sexual assault charges. As expected, he’s facing first-degree murder charges, too, after allegedly stabbing to death the younger sister…
Recreational marijuana is now legal in Colorado, but carrying eleven pounds of pot on a Greyhound bus with the “intent to manufacture or distribute” is not. That is the felony charge that landed 35-year-old Jason Ramirez in jail, after a routine check at a rest stop in Lamar uncovered an…
Skateboarding shouldn’t be a crime — but it is in certain parts of Denver. And during my recent run-in with the Denver Police Department after I was caught skateboarding on the 16th Street Mall, I learned that not only do some cops hate skateboarding, they also hate being questioned about…
Nothing signals holiday spirit like the scrawled message “I hate black people,” accompanied by a swastika. This was the message that vandals in Colorado Springs left just before Christmas, according to city officials. In an alert, police say they are searching for leads in two cases — one involving a…
After a week of silence since the Sandy Hook massacre, the National Rifle Association today said that more guns need to be part of the strategy to stop this kind of violence. Meanwhile, families of the victims of the Aurora shooting and the Columbine tragedy came together for an emotional…
When he was seventeen years old, people told Gary DeWayne Harris they didn’t expect to see him reach twenty-one. He was running with the wrong crowd, selling drugs, headed for trouble. Harris figured he had the street smarts to make a go of it, but his choices cut short his…
As we reported earlier this month, the shooting of Chloe, the beloved dog of Gary Branson, has caused quite a stir. The incident was caught on video, and footage showing an officer firing shots at the dog five times has led to an outpouring of support on a petition page…
Last Friday, Stephen Barton, a survivor of the Aurora theater shooting and now a vocal advocate for stronger gun policies, was back in Colorado, doing outreach work. While in Denver, he heard the news about the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. It was hard to comprehend,…
The tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last week has reignited policy debates in Colorado that had quieted since the July 20 massacre in Aurora. And for victims of the theater shootings, the devastation in Connecticut can also trigger painful memories. That’s why officials in Aurora…
Kirsten Hamling is sorry she stole more than $200,000 from a charity she started to raise money for Children’s Hospital burn-unit victims. Her nonprofit group, Fired Up For Kids, collected money with an annual firefighters’ calendar — which got only positive attention until accusations surfaced that Hamling was pocketing donations…
We reported yesterday that Representative Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat, plans to introduce an assault weapons ban on the very first day of the new Congress. But his colleague, Democrat Diana DeGette, is pushing for gun-control action even sooner with a bill to ban high-capacity assault magazines that she wants to…
Secretary of State Scott Gessler has faced a lot of pushback for his efforts to identify immigrants who are illegally on Colorado’s voter rolls. But over the summer, those criticisms escalated to a new level when he received multiple violent threats, some targeting his family. Through an Open Records request,…
Update, 10:30 a.m.: The man who allegedly killed three others in a Longmont home yesterday and then shot himself had been released from jail a few hours before the shooting, according to the Weld County Sheriff’s Office. Daniel Sanchez, 31, reportedly showed up to the home where his ex-girlfriend was…
Just days after a gunman broke into an elementary school in Connecticut and killed twenty children and six adults, Monica Avila, a 34-year-old Denver mother, is facing charges for allegedly bringing a gun to a middle school and threatening students who may have bullied her daughter. She was arrested after…
