Last night, a vigil was held for Dion Damon, who was killed by a Denver police officer on Tuesday, April 12. A Denver Police Department spokesman now acknowledges that Damon wasn’t armed at the time he was shot to death by Officer Jeff Motz, a 22-year law-enforcement veteran. DPD maintains…
Let’s make one thing clear from the jump: David Batty hasn’t been charged with murder after a dead woman’s body was found inside a trunk in his apartment. Not yet, anyway. He’s currently being held by authorities in Weld County on parole violations. But investigators are looking closely at Batty…
Last week, we told you about the murder of a motorcyclist in a Denver alley. The victim has been identified as Aurora’s Scott Breitinger, 45. Breitinger is being remembered at a service tomorrow evening. In the meantime, there have been no arrests in the case nor any release of suspect…
In March 2014, we told you about the arrest of Thomas LaPerch for the murder of William Burchett, a longtime local musician he met via a Craigslist ad. Now, just over two years later, LaPerch has been found guilty of the crime. According to the First Judicial District DA’s office,…
“I’m about to do something stupid,” Colorado Springs’ Patrick Orozco reportedly said on one fateful night in November 2014. And he was right. Orozco has now been convicted of doing something very stupid, and very deadly — murdering Eugenio Solorio-Gomez, a former lover of the girlfriend who’d just given Orozco the boot…
New documents have been released in Robert Dear’s attack on a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood office, which killed three people and injured twelve others. The search warrants and affidavits, on view below, reveal unequivocally that Dear was motivated by anti-abortion fervor For example, he’s said to have fantasized about being…
As we’ve reported, this Christmas will mark twenty years since the murder in Boulder of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey. Yet the fascination with the still-unsolved slaying refuses to dissipate. As evidence, consider the huge splash made in February by Internet speculation that JonBenét didn’t die — and she’s actually singer Katy Perry…
More than half of the 23 booking photos included in our most memorable mug shots gallery for March are related to each other. Allegedly through a heroin ring. Danielle Sciortino, seen above, is one of fourteen people busted in what authorities in northern Colorado say was a large-scale smack operation…
After midnight this morning, two people were shot outside My-Bar, a venue in Aurora. One of the people injured is said to be in critical condition. Yet neither of the victims is reportedly cooperating with investigators. First official word about the incident came via this Aurora Police Department tweet: Followup…
In late 2014, we told you about the arrest of Chataignier McCaffrey-Pickett, a then-21-year-old who became the fifth and final person arrest in relation to the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of Fort Collins’ Andrea Bartmess. McCaffrey-Pickett’s final Facebook post before being taken into custody didn’t directly address the case, but…
Last year, we told you about the death of Justin Burns, a fourteen-year-old from Palisade who was accidentally killed while hunting on the Grand Mesa, located on Colorado’s Western Slope. The shooter, Minnesota’s Guy Pohto, was charged in the incident, and Burns’s family has filed a lawsuit against him. Now,…
Last month, we told you about a Park Hill shooting that killed a man and injured a woman. Initial details were scarce, but the gang unit was reportedly on the scene. Weeks later, more information has emerged. The man killed was Tarell Burton, eighteen — and a young father, as…
Our Thomas Mitchell recently reported about a petition to ban all marijuana businesses in Pueblo County. Against this backdrop comes word about two busts of illegal marijuana grows in the jurisdiction — events that could become politicized by both supporters and opponents of the ban. The incidents resulted in the…
When the fourteen-year-old girl woke up unclothed in bed with Isaias Villa, twenty, he insisted that he’d taken care of her — not taken advantage. His DNA told a different story. Villa has now been charged with sexual assault against the teen — although it took nearly a decade to…
The bloodshed continues — and in this case, the victim of a homicide was a family doctor simply trying to aid a woman in distress. Following two fatal shootings on Sunday (one in Denver, the other in Northglenn) and just prior to a stabbing on the 16th Street Mall last…
Yesterday, in reporting about two metro-area shootings — a motorcyclist killed in Denver, a man dead in Northglenn — we noted the unfortunate correlation between warmer weather and violent crimes. Tuesday night, that phenomenon reared its head again on the 16th Street Mall. A stabbing took place on the 16th…
One of the most controversial Colorado stories of 2015 involved a sexting scandal at Canon City High School in which more than 100 students were implicated. At first, authorities hinted that those involved might be prosecuted — but in the end, no criminal charges were pressed. In contrast, Aaron Belanger is…
The Facebook pages of Savanna Grose and Chris Tafoya are tributes to loving parenting. Grose’s intro reads: “I am the luckiest momma in the whole entire world! My daughter is the most amazing person I know!” And Tafoya’s gallery is dominated by photos of him with the couple’s adorable little…
It’s a sad but inescapable annual trend. As the weather warms up, the number of metro-area shootings tends to rise. Witness two fatal incidents that took place yesterday. The first took the life of a motorcyclist in Denver. The second killed a man in Northglenn. The Denver matter is being…
A civil action was filed this week accusing District 6 Commander Tony Lopez of violating protester Jessica Benn’s constitutional rights when he seized her cell phone as she recorded her husband’s arrest last April. The suit claims Lopez and the Denver Police Department violated her First Amendment right to record “newsworthy…
The father of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights is back in jail. Last week Douglas Bruce was sentenced to two years in prison for violating probation, the latest chapter in a checkered past that the Gazette captured in its cover story, “A Greek Tragedy: The Rise and Fall of TABOR…
Former East High School student Elhadji Samba Dioum has taken a plea deal in a criminal trial connected to a police lockdown that occurred on East High’s campus on December 3. On Friday, March 25, Dioum pleaded guilty to third-degree assault – a misdemeanor – as part of a deal…
