Man Pleads Guilty in Connection to Viral Attack Against Denver Protesters

One of the suspects in an attack against Denver protesters in February has taken a plea deal.

David Halverson, 49, pled guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor in Denver District Court on Thursday, September 25. The original eight counts against him were dismissed, including felony charges of attempted bias-motivated crime with bodily injury and being an accessory to a crime.

Contributing to the delinquency of a minor is a class one misdemeanor punishable by up to 364 days in jail, a fine of up to $1,000, or both. Halverson is due back in court for sentencing on November 6.

The case stems from a viral video showing a passenger in a truck throwing glass bottles toward a group of women and doing a Nazi salute out of the window on February 8. The women were walking on Lincoln Street to a protest at the Colorado Capitol against the mass deportations of immigrants. The victims say the driver and passenger shouted “white power” and “Nazi power” at them before throwing the glass.

Halverson is believed to have been the driver of the truck. The passenger was also arrested but is a minor, so his identity was not released, according to the Denver Police Department.

In explaining the charge against Halverson, Judge Martin Egelhoff said he had “unlawfully induced, aided or encouraged [the juvenile] to violate a state law…namely, attempted assault in the third-degree.”

It is unclear what charges the juvenile is facing. His case is still open and ongoing as of September 25, according to the Denver District Attorney’s Office.

The duo was arrested on February 18 after intense outcry from the public regarding the attack. The victims say they reported the incident to law enforcement officers at the protest, but they were initially not responsive. The women then posted the video on TikTok, garnering 2.5 million views and sparking an online movement seeking to identify the assailants.

One citizen journalist filmed himself confronting a man who appears to be Halverson after tracking the truck to a Denver home. The man admitted to the attack and to yelling “Nazi power,” claiming he did so because someone called him a Nazi (though he said that comment did not come from the women who were attacked).

“I fucked up. I am not a racist,” the man said in the video. “I threw the glass, I was driving the truck, and it was never intended to be a hate crime. …I didn’t even know what the hell was going on. I’m a grumpy old man that was just trying to get through traffic.”

That story does not align with the video of the incident. The video shows that the passenger, not the driver, threw the glass. In addition, Lincoln Street was empty at the time of the attack, not blocked by traffic or protesters; the truck even drove backward down the one-way street to get closer to the women.

Before the arrest, the victims told Westword that nothing preceded the attack and that the men immediately started yelling at them after they got out of their vehicle holding signs with phrases including “deport racists” and “immigrants make America great.” They suspect the men were driving around the area looking for protesters to target.

“It was kind of pathetic, two guys going after three girls,” one of the victims noted.

Halverson has been arrested a dozen times over the last three decades, largely for misdemeanor offenses except for two felony property crimes in the late ’90s, according to records from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. He was most recently charged with threatening assault and disturbing the peace in 2011.