Jeremiah Hooker, 28, was arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder last year. Now, however, he has been convicted of a much less serious charge: tampering with evidence. Prosecutors say he was guilty only of trying to hide a gun in a gopher hole after what is now believed to have been a tragic accident among friends.
What are arguably the two most shocking crimes to take place in Denver during this still-young year followed over the next couple of weeks, and both had RTD connections. Against this backdrop, we reached out to spokesman Scott Reed to ask how RTD is responding to these two shootings.
Michael Radelet, author of a book on the history of executions in Colorado, talks about the latest push to ban the death penalty in the state.
If passed, a new bill will create a Colorado domestic violence fatality review board and mandate that agencies throughout the state gather and share details about fatal and near-death domestic-violence. The result, state senator Lucia Guzman believes, will be a more complete picture of this particularly horrific crime. “After we have that,” she says, “we can hopefully move into a prevention mode.”
Nathan Valdez, the nineteen-year-old wanted for the killing of Tim Cruz, 32, at the 12th and Sheridan light-rail station on February 7, has been taken into custody. He is being held on suspicion of first-degree murder.
How many hit-and-runs are there in Denver? We analyzed Denver Police Department traffic-accident data for the first six days of February, and by our count, a staggering 99 hit-and-runs took place over that span, including 22 of them on a single day.
During a court hearing marked by tears and frustration, Brooke Higgins, now seventeen, was sentenced following guilty pleas in adult court for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and in juvenile court for solicitation to commit murder as part of what the 18th Judicial District DA’s office calls “a plot against Mountain Vista High School” circa December 2015. As district attorney George Brauchler told us in our previous coverage, on view below, this unusual combination of juvenile and adult charges was pressed so that prosecutors could publicly release their evidence against Higgins, and they’ve done so. Her arrest affidavit, also shared here, details what Brauchler and company see as practical plans for a Columbine-style attack and what Higgins’s family and supporters view as the dark fantasies of a troubled, drug-abusing teen who never meant to hurt anyone.
Rebekah Joy Wallin has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the disturbing March 2016 death of Bethannie Johnson, the three-year-old niece of her live-in girlfriend, Shanna Gossett. When asked by the judge in the case why she had decided to enter this plea, Wallin gave a simple answer. “Because I’m guilty,” she said.
The February 1 press conference about the arrest of Joshua Cummings in the execution-style killing of RTD security officer Scott Von Lanken took place on an upper level of the Denver Police Department administration building. Afterward, I rode an elevator toward the ground floor with DPD public-information officer Doug Schepman and another man. As we descended, the man asked, “Do the elevators here always smell like weed?” Schepman laughed. “Some days, it’s worse than others,” he said.
Stalking or sexual assault victims living in a rental apartment where the crime took place aren’t legally allowed to break their lease even if they live dangerously close to the perpetrator in question. Individuals in this situation are forced to choose between financial ruin and being traumatized again and again in a residence where their physical safety and mental well-being are at risk.
It took a year, but an arrest has finally been made in the murder of Agate’s Ed Butler. Joe Robert Love, a 26-year-old from Colorado Springs, is currently in custody in El Paso, Texas for a slaying solved with assistance from video footage showing the suspected killer eating a candy bar and spinning in place at the scene of the crime.
Dan Williams has been sentenced to two years of probation for shooting and killing two bear cubs outside his Evergreen home in September 2015. However, his punishment in the court of public opinion has been much worse.
On February 9, former University of Colorado Boulder defensive coach Joe Tumpkin is scheduled to appear in Adams County court for a preliminary hearing related to multiple counts of assault related to domestic violence accusations. But thanks to an exposé in Sports Illustrated, CU Boulder is already on trial in the court of public opinion over its handling of the Tumpkin matter, and the fallout is capable of undermining a program that took more than a decade to recover from a recruiting scandal whose ripples recently revealed a past sex assault investigation targeting new Broncos head football coach (and former CU Boulder assistant) Vance Joseph.
Did Joshua Cummings, who’s now been formally advised of a first-degree murder charge naming him in the execution-style slaying of RTD security officer Scott Von Lanken, ask for a beer at the conclusion of his initial court appearance?
A new study of Denver police shootings between 1983 and 2012 concludes that approximately 47 percent of them were questionable, 18 percent were problematic and just 35 percent were what co-author Robert Durán considers to be legitimate.
Much more information has emerged about Joshua Cummings, the 37-year-old man who is suspected in the execution-style murder of RTD security officer Scott Von Lanken late on Tuesday, January 31. The former head of a Texas Jiu-Jitsuka academy who had recently moved to Colorado, Cummings expressed antipathy for police in multiple posts that remained online even as reports surfaced that he reportedly had “Muslim documents” on his person when he was taken into custody and spoke in what sources described as “an Arabic language.”
The Denver Police Department has arrested Joshua Cummings, 37, for the execution-style murder of an RTD contract security officer. Investigators say they’re currently looking into the possibility that the officer was targeted because of his uniform, which is described as looking similar to those worn by members of the DPD.
The mystery surrounding the death of Holly Lynn Moore, a 19-year-old college student found hanging in a closet in her Castle Rock apartment in 2015, just keeps getting deeper. Family members have spent months and thousands of dollars uncovering evidence that suggests Moore’s death wasn’t the suicide that it appears to be.
In the wake of his death, Aaron Tuneberg’s family set up Aaron’s Fund, which raises money to help at-risk adults live safer and more fulfilling lives.
Luke Pelham says he didn’t foresee what was going to happen the night he went to his friend Aaron Tuneberg’s apartment with another eighteen-year-old he barely knew. Pelham didn’t think it would turn tragic — not even when the other guy brought along a bat and a golf club. “If…
Just shy of two years after a pair of Denver police officers shot and killed seventeen-year-old Jessie Hernandez while she was behind the wheel of a stolen car, the department for which they work has announced that they will face no discipline in the controversial case, since their actions didn’t violate policy about firing into a moving vehicle in place at the time of the incident.
Courtney Plante has taken a plea agreement in regard to attempted murder allegations against her significant other Sean Overstreet dating back to January 2016, when she was nineteen and he was 37. The deal trims time off her possible sentence but doesn’t let her off the hook for a crime against her former teacher that was as violent as it was bizarre.
