Category Archives: Colorado

Republican choice for vacated US House seat is surprise boon for Lauren Boebert

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Colorado Republicans chose former mayor Greg Lopez, who plans to step down, leaving no incumbent or favored primary candidate

A Colorado Republican panel made the surprising decision on Thursday night to choose a former mayor, Greg Lopez, to be congressman Ken Buck’s likely replacement until the November general election, a saving grace for Lauren Boebert’s bid for another term in Congress.

Lopez will now run as the Republican candidate in the 25 June special election after Buck’s resignation at the same time GOP primary candidates are vying to be the congressman’s successor.

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Super Tuesday 2024 live: millions of voters head to polls in the US as Haley suggests she could stay in the race

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Donald Trump looks all but certain of Republican presidential nomination as Nikki Haley rejects suggestions of third-party bid and says she may keep fighting

Over at CNN, Ronald Brownstein has an analysis piece which looks a little at the potential weakness of Donald Trump support away from his core base. Brownstein writes:

[Trump’s] performance so far reflects his success at transforming the Republican Party in his image. He’s reshaped the Republicans into a more blue-collar, populist and pugnacious party, focused more on his volatile blend of resentments against elites and cultural and racial change than the Ronald Reagan-era priorities of smaller government and active global leadership that former South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley has stressed.

But while the primaries have underscored Trump’s grip on the GOP, they have also demonstrated continued vulnerability for him in the areas where he has labored since he first announced his candidacy in 2015 – particularly among the white-collar suburban voters who mostly leaned toward the GOP before his emergence. The early 2024 nominating contests have shown that a substantial minority of Republican-leaning voters remain resistant to Trump’s vision.

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Colorado moves to change law after 190 bodies found decaying in funeral home

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Proposals would stiffen state’s lax funeral home laws after series of gruesome cases, from sold body parts to fake ashes

After nearly 200 bodies were found stacked and rotting in a Colorado funeral home, lawmakers have proposed bills to overhaul the state’s threadbare funeral home regulations, which failed to prevent a string of gruesome cases – from sold body parts to fake ashes.

The cases have shattered hundreds of families. Many learned that their loved ones’ remains were not in the ashes they ceremonially spread or held tight for years but were instead decaying in a building or, in one case, the back of hearse.

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‘They felt no need to stop the brutality’: Colorado paramedic gets five-year prison term for killing Elijah McClain

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Peter Cichuniec one of two paramedics convicted of criminally negligent homicide for role in 23-year-old’s death after police stop

A former Colorado paramedic has been sentenced to five years in prison in the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain after he was stopped by Aurora police.

Peter Cichuniec was one of two paramedics convicted of criminally negligent homicide for their roles in the 23-year-old’s death, which sparked years of protests and changes in the law. A jury also found Cichuniec guilty of second-degree assault. The outcome marks an extremely rare instance of a paramedic being found criminally liable and facing a prison sentence for a death in police custody.

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Martin Luther King Jr memorial vandalized in Colorado park

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Denver police investigating if racial bias was involved in disappearance of pieces including panel depicting Black veterans

A large Martin Luther King Jr memorial in Denver’s City park was vandalized, and police are trying to determine if racial bias was involved.

Several pieces of the marble and bronze I Have a Dream memorial were stolen sometime Tuesday. The missing pieces include a bronze torch and angel, as well as a bronze panel that depicted Black military veterans, the Denver Post reported.

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Remains of 30 people found in Denver after ex-funeral home owner evicted

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Body of woman, 63, also found at house as police issue warrant for Miles Harford, 33, who owned funeral home that closed in 2022

The body of a woman who died in 2022 and the cremated remains of about 30 people were found at a rental house in Denver after the eviction of a former funeral home owner, Denver police said on Friday.

A warrant was issued for Miles Harford, 33, who owned Apollo Funeral and Cremation Service in Littleton, which has been closed since September 2022. The expected charges include abuse of a corpse, forgery of the death certificate and theft of the money paid for the cremation.

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‘The Lord told us to’: US pastor says he stole $1m from Christians to remodel home

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Couple are charged with creating and selling their cryptocurrency, known as ‘INDXcoin’, to Christian community in Denver, Colorado

A Colorado pastor who is charged with stealing more than $1m from his Christian community in a cryptocurrency scheme has admitted to the fraud but argued that God instructed him to carry it out.

Eli Regalado and his wife, Kaitlyn, are charged with creating and selling their cryptocurrency, known as “INDXcoin”, to Christians based in their home town of Denver, Colorado, allegedly telling would-be investors that the Lord had told him people would become rich if they invested, the state’s division of securities announced in a press release on Thursday.

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Newspapers stolen after a story about rape charges at Colorado police chief’s house

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Theft occurred on day the Ouray County Plaindealer published story about alleged sexual assault at party at police chief’s house

Nearly all the copies of a small-town Colorado newspaper were stolen from newspaper racks on the same day the Ouray County Plaindealer published a story about charges being filed over rapes alleged to have occurred at an underage drinking party at the police chief’s house while the chief was asleep, the owner and publisher said Friday.

Mike Wiggins vowed to get to the bottom of it, posting Thursday on X, formerly Twitter: “If you hoped to silence or intimidate us, you failed miserably. We’ll find out who did this. And another press run is imminent.”

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‘You can’t forget it’: FBI agent recounts decaying bodies at Colorado funeral home

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New details emerge about 200 bodies found in October, including fluids, maggots and incriminating texts between owners

Investigators who entered a Colorado funeral home where nearly 200 abandoned bodies were found encountered stacks of partially covered human remains, bodily fluids several inches deep on the floor, and flies and maggots throughout the building, an FBI agent testified on Thursday.

Prosecutors also revealed text messages sent between the funeral home’s owners showing they were under growing financial pressures and had fears that they would be caught for mishandling the bodies. As the bodies accumulated, one of the co-owners even suggested getting rid of them by digging a big hole and treating them with lye or setting them on fire, according to the texts.

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Lauren Boebert denies allegations that she punched ex-husband in restaurant

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Colorado police reportedly arrived after Jayson Boebert called and claimed he was ‘victim of domestic violence’ and punched in face

Rightwing US congresswoman Lauren Boebert is denying allegations that she punched her ex-husband in the face in public after police in Colorado were reportedly called out to an encounter involving the pair Saturday night at a restaurant.

The incident was first reported by the Daily Beast. The news site said that Jayson Boebert called police claiming that he was a “victim of domestic violence”. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Jayson Boebert alleged that the congresswoman had “punched” him in the face several times. He claimed to have a witness to the events.

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Ex-police officer sentenced to 14 months in jail for killing Elijah McClain in 2019

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Randy Roedema, found guilty of criminally negligent homicide, is the first official to be sentenced in the 23-year-old’s killing

A former Colorado police officer convicted in the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain was sentenced to 14 months in county jail on Friday.

Randy Roedema, an ex-Aurora police department (APD) officer, was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault in October. He is the first official to face jail time for the killing of McClain, a 23-year-old whose death led to years of protests and calls for reforms.

This story was amended on 6 January 2024 to clarify that Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper are paramedics, not EMTs.

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Trump asks US supreme court to review Colorado ruling removing him from 2024 ballot

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Colorado supreme court issued ruling on Tuesday but in anticipation of appeal stayed it until 4 January

Donald Trump appealed to the US supreme court on Wednesday to undo the Colorado ruling that removed him from the ballot in the western state under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, for inciting an insurrection.

“In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their Wednesday filing. They also said the Colorado supreme court’s ruling “if allowed to stand, will mark the first time in the history of the United States that the judiciary has prevented voters from casting ballots for the leading major-party presidential candidate”.

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Police arrest man they say held guard at gunpoint at Colorado supreme court

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Man reportedly shot at the building and fired additional rounds while inside, but no one was injured by the gunfire

Police have arrested a Colorado man who they say broke into the state’s supreme court building and held a security guard at gunpoint.

Authorities have said the break-in is not connected to previous threats received by Colorado supreme court justices after their decision last month to remove Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot. Rather, they said it resulted from a nearby car crash in which one motorist pulled a gun on another.

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New gun safety laws take effect around US after over 650 mass shootings in 2023

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California, Illinois and Colorado among states implementing ‘red flag’ laws after US ends 2023 with more mass shootings than days

New gun safety laws are taking effect in several states around the US on 1 January after the country ended 2023 with more mass shootings than days.

States including California, Illinois and Colorado are starting the year by implementing extreme risk protection orders, more commonly referred to as “red flag” laws, as a means to prevent further gun violence. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 655 mass shootings in the US in 2023.

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Lauren Boebert announces change of congressional district for 2024 elections

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Far-right Colorado representative had won the third district by just 546 votes in 2022 and will move to the fourth for a ‘fresh start’

Colorado’s Republican representative Lauren Boebert has announced that she will be changing congressional districts ahead of her 2024 Republican nomination bid for the House.

In a Facebook video on Wednesday, the 36-year old, far-right representative announced that she would be moving from Colorado’s third district to its fourth district.

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FBI investigating threats directed at Colorado supreme court justices after Trump ruling

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Court voted 4-3 last week that ex-president was ineligible to run for White House again under US constitution’s insurrection clause

Colorado police are working with the FBI to investigate threats directed at justices of the state’s supreme court after its decision to remove Donald Trump from the presidential primary ballot.

The court voted 4-3 last week that the former president was ineligible to run for the White House again, citing a rarely used clause in the US constitution and his role in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

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Blizzard conditions hit US northern plains and upper midwest

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Freezing weather affecting more than a million people expected in parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado

Snow, freezing rain and high winds are hitting the northern plains and upper midwest states, with the National Weather Service warning that “blizzard conditions for central South Dakota into parts of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado [are] resulting in difficult to near impossible travel” soon after Christmas.

Parts of South Dakota were expected to receive up to 13in of snow, with wind gusts as high as 55 mph, according to the weather forecasting agency. The conditions affecting more than a million people could last through early Wednesday, forecasters said.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene among US public figures hit by threats and swatting

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Congresswoman said hoaxer tried to trigger police response while Colorado justices who ruled against Trump face threats

The political became personal over the Christmas holiday as the homes of politicos and judges were targeted by threats, protests and “swatting” hoaxes by pranksters who call in fake emergencies to authorities in the hopes of prompting a forceful police response.

A swatting hoax targeted the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Authorities said they were investigating threats against the Colorado supreme court justices who ruled that Trump could not appear on the state’s ballots in the 2024 presidential election because he incited an insurrection on the day of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

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Elijah McClain: two Colorado paramedics convicted of criminally negligent homicide in 2019 killing

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EMTs Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper injected 23-year-old with high dose of ketamine in a case that sparked mass protests

Two Colorado paramedics have been convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Elijah McClain after he was stopped by police in 2019.

The jury’s guilty verdicts on Friday for Aurora EMTs Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper mark an extraordinarily rare case of paramedics being found criminally liable for a civilian’s death in police custody and follow years of protests. Cichuniec was also found guilty of second-degree assault. Cooper was acquitted on the assault charges.

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Colorado supreme court justices face death threats after Trump ruling

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Report finds ‘significant violent rhetoric’ against justices and Democrats online after ruling to exclude Trump from ballot

Justices on the Colorado supreme court are receiving a barrage of death threats after it ruled to exclude Donald Trump from the state’s presidential ballot next year because of his attempts to cause insurrection.

A report compiled by Advance Democracy, a non-partisan non-profit organization, said there was “significant violent rhetoric” against the justices and Democrats on social media, according to NBC News.

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