Over recent weeks, there have been a series of high-profile crimes on Regional Transportation District buses in the Denver metro area, including a stabbing, an assault and a case of indecent exposure. Yet an RTD spokesman argues that despite such regrettable incidents, the district’s buses, trains and assorted properties are safe — and getting safer all the time.
A lawsuit inspired by a video in which Greg Heard, a homeless man, is tased while giving himself up to a Denver police officer is currently in the works. But Heard’s attorney, John Holland, is releasing the video prior to the suit’s filing (see it below) because “it’s a matter of public concern. It should be out there, so people can understand that they should be very, very careful when confronting police officers armed with tasers. Because they will be tased — and many people have died from tasing. It can be deadly.”
It’s taken nearly seven years to convict Javier Aguirre of killing Lyndsay Pham at Aurora’s Descano Plaza Apartments, which she co-owned and managed, even though even though police suspected Aguirre from the early stages of the investigation.
Otero County Jail inmate Jennifer Hernandez says she was sexually assaulted by a guard through the open bars of her jail cell amid a highly sexualized environment that allowed male corrections officers to routinely see her naked.
The City of Aurora has agreed to pay $325,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by fourteen people detained at gunpoint by police officers for over an hour during a clumsy search for a man who’d robbed a nearby bank while wearing a beekeeper’s suit.
Early yesterday morning, a man was shot to death outside a strip club — specifically PT’s All Nude, also known as PT’s Centerfold Show Club, located at 3480 Galena Street. Such venues have been the setting for similar violent crimes numerous times in recent years. Indeed, just last week, we reported…
Even the best skier or snowboarder has been on a chairlift and had this fleeting thought: “I could fall off this thing.” That nightmare scenario became a reality for Seth Beckton in January, when Thomas Proesel pushed the snowboarder off an Aspen Highlands chairlift after Beckton made a casual comment…
Here are some of the most notable stories that Westword has run over the years dealing with Colorado’s most infamous unsolved homicide.
Today is the twentieth anniversary of the death of JonBenét Ramsey on December 26, 1996. Many of the issues that dominated local headlines this year — including homelessness, the rising cost of housing and a steady influx of transplants, and an increasingly crazy election — were all too easy to…
When 3-1-1 operators receive complaints about graffiti, they first ask the caller: Is the graffiti profane, hateful or racist? Sonja Jackson says she has had to ask that question a lot lately. The 3-1-1 operator with the city of Denver says she saw “an almost immediate uptick in the number…
Through an open records request, Westword obtained records for fifteen years (2001-2016) on causes of death that the Colorado Department of Corrections submits to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Close to twenty percent of the deaths during that period were attributed to “end stage liver disease” or related illnesses.
Update: Last year, a series of bank robberies perpetrated by men wearing masks familiar from the movie Scream culminated in a massive manhunt for three suspects, one of whom wound up on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. All three of the suspects — Miguel Sanders, Tyrone Richardson and Myloh Mason —…
Attorneys who sued the U.S. Bureau of Prisons over alleged abuses of mentally ill inmates have reached a tentative settlement that could have a profound effect on how solitary confinement is used at the nation’s highest-security prison.
Update: In October, Tyrone Adair Jr., best known to members of the local hip-hop community as BossMan Goodie, was shot to death outside Cold Crush, a venue that was temporarily closed as a public nuisance after the incident; see our previous coverage below. Now, the Denver District Attorney’s Office has announced…
Early next year, Mitch Morrissey will end his term as Denver district attorney — an office he assumed in January 2005. Morrissey’s twelve years in office are among the most eventful of any DA in Denver’s history. Over that span, he earned national attention for his office’s use of DNA…
At least one cable channel is betting that the glut of JonBenét Ramsey specials three months ago hasn’t exhausted the public fascination with one of the nation’s most infamous unsolved homicides.
Comedian and Denver favorite T.J. Miller, who was born and raised in the Mile High, has had a busy past few days. Early Friday morning, according to TMZ, Miller, who is currently co-starring with Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston and plenty of other notables in Office Christmas Party, was arrested in…
Since February 2013, we’ve been reporting about the disappearance of Kelsie Jean Schelling, a onetime resident of Denver (she lived in the Larimer Square area) who vanished in Pueblo. She’d headed south to see her boyfriend shortly after learning she was pregnant. In the intervening three-years-plus, the case has gotten…
Thus far, Burke Ramsey, brother of JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered in her Boulder home on December 25, 1996, nearly twenty years ago, hasn’t filed a promised lawsuit against CBS for a docuseries that essentially accused him of murder. But his attorney is shrugging off a dismissal motion from an expert…
Update: Earlier this fall, as we’ve reported (see our previous coverage below), Christopher Gebers was found guilty for his role in a 2015 crash that caused the death of Colorado State Patrol Cadet Taylor Thyfault, 21, and the serious injury of Trooper Clinton Rushing, 37. Now, Gebers has been handed a stunning…
The Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association has released its list of the ten most stolen cars in Colorado by make and model. But in a report entitled “Assessment of Motor Vehicle Thefts in Colorado 2015,” the organization also drills down into the prevalence of car theft across the state —…
Update: In September, Adrian Moya pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder in regard to a gun battle last December between him and a Northglenn police officer. Each of them were shot multiple times, but both survived — and in April, the officer, who’d been wearing a ballistic vest that likely saved…
