The front page of Reddit.com right now is topped by this story: “i am one of the 50 wounded in the aurora theatre shooting. here are a few photos of my very lucky but nonethless terrifying brush with death. my thoughts go out to those less fortunate than me.” Below…
The City of Aurora and its booster group, Visit Aurora, have been working hard to advance the city’s profile, pushing the upstart suburb just east of Denver out from under the shadow of its older, bigger sibling and making it a household name across the country. Today it is. But…
Update: Family members and friends on Twitter are identifying one of the victims of the shooting at the Aurora Town Center Century 16 during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises as Jessica Ghawi, a 104.3 The Fan intern who tweeted under the name Jessica Redfield. Chillingly, her last…
Overnight, a gunman opened fire during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises at the Aurora Town Center Century 16 movie complex. At this writing (and these numbers could well change, and change soon), fourteen people are confirmed dead, with an estimated fifty wounded, some said to be in…
Luke Irvin Chrisco, who became known last summer as the Boulder porta-potty peeper, has been found competent to stand trial — even if it seems like no person in his right mind would choose such a venue to get his creep on. But strange as that was, someone else pulled…
The 1996 Boulder murder of JonBenét Ramsey was one of the biggest stories in the country for years, and questions about the unsolved case continue to be asked, albeit at a lower volume than was heard a decade and a half ago. Note that former detective A. James Kolar’s Foreign…
Deonte Crews, an eighteen-year-old “self-admitted” gang member, has been arrested and charged with attempted murder for shooting into a group of people standing in a yard at 4490 North Dillon Street in Montbello on July 12. A probable cause statement on view below says Crews is a member of the…
“Not so glad to be home,” Greeley high school teacher Rhonda Eisenberg wrote on the wall of her Facebook page this past Saturday, after returning from an enjoyable trip to Lake Dillon and Vail. But she may have a different point of view on that sentiment this morning, given that…
Update: Only hours after we posted about Brian Hedglin, a man sought by Colorado Springs authorities in the murder of Christina Cornejo (he was on bond for having allegedly harassing her earlier this year), he ended his life in a blaze of infamy. Hedglin reportedly tried to hijack a plane…
Within the past month, with the explanation that “spring and summer are very active times for Gypsy-related criminal activities,” a letter has circulated under the auspices of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office warning area residents against “Gypsy Scams.” When the warning reached attorneys at the Colorado ACLU, the civil rights…
The profile picture on Jacob Vanderbeek’s Facebook page portrays a goofy young man with an obvious sense of humor — and there’s a certain cheek about his actions of July 14 as described by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. Too bad they led to a high-speed car chase that ended…
A short time ago, we reported about a Sunday night homicide in Aurora that probably took place near East Second Avenue and Peoria, although police aren’t positive about the location just yet. About an hour afterward, another man was shot dead in the city, likely on the 1500 block of…
It’s been a bloody spring in Aurora, and last night, it got a lot bloodier thanks to not one but two homicide within an hour or so of each other. The first of these probably took place after 10 p.m. yesterday, but at this writing, Aurora police aren’t certain where…
When a child gets in trouble, the first instinct of many parents is to cover for him. But in the case of Michel Martin, this alleged actions have led to a criminal charge. That’s because his sixteen-year-old son, not him, is thought to have been behind the wheel of a…
When a guy’s got to smoke, a guy’s got to smoke. But what if he’s told he can’t smoke, no matter how badly he needs to suck a soothing cloud of tar and nicotine into his lungs? The answer for Eric Cech, according to a Boulder Police report on view…
Here at the Criminal Affairs Desk, we’ve remarked before that malfeasance in Colorado Springs often takes strange twists. Not that crime waves are any more severe or more violent in El Paso County than they are in the Denver area; they’re just…different. Like the rock-wielding bandit who recently terrorized Springs…
Seldom has a single line in a police report summed up the entire document as does a quote attributed to Clifford Garel in the probable cause statement below: “I beat the shit out of my mom.” Said mother is 84 years old, by the way. And Garel doesn’t appear to…
On November 1, Alex Martinez traded his spot in the Colorado State Supreme Court to become Denver’s sixth manager of safety in slightly more than a year. He has spoken publicly about his priorities for the position, which center on renewing public trust in the Denver Police Department and his…
Scott Kramer, husband of the year? Not if the accusations made against him in an arrest affidavit on view below prove true. According to the document, he not only threatened to kill his soon-to-be-former spouse’s new boyfriend, but he also torched her wedding dress and photo albums…
Yesterday, we told you about Jesse Evans, an alleged child pornographer — and unfortunately, he’s got plenty of apparent peers. The Colorado Internet Crimes Against Children website assembles photos and descriptions of accused creepazoids from across the state — most of them white men, with only a few exceptions (there’s…
Update: Last week, when Colorado Springs Police Department spokeswoman Barbara Miller told us that Waldo Canyon fire evacuees had been victimized by 22 burglaries and sixteen car break-ins, she stressed that the numbers could go up as authorities got more access to the blaze zone. And have they ever. The…
In this week’s cover story, “Back on the Beat,” Westword explores recent changes within the Denver Police Department’s oversight system and its investigation of Alex Landau’s January 2009 beating. For a while, there won’t be any changes: While the Department of Justice analyzes the Landau, the DPD has delayed its…
