Crime & Police

We hear all too often about teachers accused of having sex with underage students. Indeed, in 2012, we published a roundup of five teacher-student sex allegations in Colorado, featuring the cases of Alexandra McLean, Courtney Bowles, Oscar Ponce, Zachary Meints and Tera Rawlings. Nonetheless, the actions of Greeley’s Katerina Bardos remain absolutely…

The Twitter profile photo of Loveland’s Jason Halla makes it clear that he works out. A lot. How did he build up his muscles to such an impressive degree? He apparently got some assistance from testosterone supplements — products that police say led to a violent turn of events. Jason…

Gary Nickal claimed that his wife, Molly Nickal, took her own life at their residence while their three kids were at home. But police didn’t believe him. Gary has been arrested on suspicion of murder. At this writing, this charge hasn’t been formalized. However, Gary is due back in court…

Law-enforcement agencies in a lot of communities produce most-wanted lists. But Fort Collins has taken things a step further. Community reps have created a Fort Collins Police: Most Wanted Facebook page on which it features suspects on posters of the sort we associate with the Old West, but created with new…

How much was Timothy Gomez’s life worth? According to a jury, Charlie Brammeier valued it at $20 — the amount of a drug transaction prosecutors say led to Gomez being beaten to death by a Mag-Lite flashlight. But the cost to Brammeier will turn out to be infinitely higher than that. According…

It was one of the strangest stories of 2015: The arrest of Julieane Jablonski after Austin Essig, her nineteen year old son, jumped out a window, allegedly under the influence of a marijuana edible she provided. Now, a jury has ruled on Jablonski’s case — and while she reportedly avoided…

In a post published yesterday about the decision not to charge the cop who gunned down Adrian Moya in December, we noted the high number of officer-involved shootings in Colorado of late — including one that killed a man in Lakewood on April 26. Add another incident to that number…

Pueblo is perceived to be a marijuana-friendly city — so much so that in March, High Times attempted to move its Cannabis Cup there before eventually relocating it to California. But in recent weeks, a slew of arrests related to allegedly illegal marijuana grows have taken place in the community, including the…

Massage therapist Marcos Duran has been arrested on suspicion of two sex crimes for allegedly going way over the line. A woman maintains that during a massage, he touched her genitals in so deliberate a way that police in Fort Collins fear there may be additional victims. Most of the…

Graffiti is so common in metropolitan areas that the crime seldom makes the news. But what happened overnight in the Washington Virginia Vale neighborhood is the sort of exception that makes the rule. An estimated 25-35 cars and buildings on or near the 700 block of South Hudson Street were vandalized with, among other…

Last summer, a family member of Camille Harrell, who was murdered in June, told us that the “gentle giant” was killed after defending her twin sister, Carmen, at East Colfax’s Sand & Sage Motel. Now, in the wake of Brandon Foote’s conviction for the crime (Merita Curry, who’s also charged in…

There was a very strong reaction to our recent post about Thomas LaPerch after he was found guilty of killing William Burchett, who he met on Craigslist. Over the years, we’ve written about numerous crimes with ties to Craigslist, including robberies and even shootings. However, the Burchett matter turns out to have…

Some folks remain uncomfortable with the prevalence of HALO cameras on Denver streets, typically because they don’t like the idea that Big Brother is watching them. But law enforcers counter that the cameras help them catch criminals who might otherwise go unpunished. A case in point: Former taxi driver Hidet…

In recent days, we’ve been reporting about attacks on the 16th Street Mall, as exemplified by two stabbings this month — incidents that raise fears of rising violence in the iconic area and questions about the lack of emphasis City of Denver officials seem to be putting on the problem…

This morning, I can definitely identify the concept of a crime happening close to home. During the wee hours, a clerk was shot during a robbery attempt at a Diamond Shamrock Corner Store across the street from Westword’s 969 Broadway offices — and at this writing, the suspect is still…

Branden Harms is said to have watched his girlfriend’s baby for a few hours earlier this month. What happened over that span is unclear. But one thing is certain. Just over a day later, the child was dead — and Harms has been arrested under suspicion that he was responsible…

Earlier this month, we told you about a stabbing on the 16th Street Mall. The incident raised fears of increasing violence along the iconic strip, which was the setting for a string of troubling incidents last summer. Included among them was an attack on a tourist after he complained about…

Arrests of teachers for sex crimes is quite rare — but sometimes it doesn’t seem like it. Case in point: Jeffrey Falk, a veteran math teacher at ThunderRidge High, has pleaded guilty to three sexual exploitation of a child counts committed after he stepped down from the school — shortly…

In recent months, we’ve been reporting about Ralph Candelario, who was convicted of killing his wife, Pam Candelario, in Walsenburg after initially claiming that she was slain by intruders who also injured him. The Candelario case was featured this past Friday on Dateline NBC — and the impact of that national…

There’s plenty of aggression evident on Joshua Owings’s Facebook page. Mixed in with photos of a child who appears to have been at the center of a custody dispute are images like the one above and plenty of in-your-face text, including Owings’s 2014 claim to have graduated from a college…