On Friday, February 2, a feared confrontation between members of a white supremacist group and Antifa protesters outside a controversial event on the Colorado State University campus came to pass. Although no arrests took place, multiple reports say things got physical between the antagonists, with injuries suffered on both sides.
At 4 p.m. today, February 5, Steffan Tubbs will begin his first show as afternoon-drive host for KNUS, at 710 AM. The gig offers a career-rebirth opportunity for the longtime host of KOA’s Colorado Morning News, who was dismissed by management at iHeartMedia, the outlet’s owner, following his August 2017 arrest on suspicion of domestic violence by telephone and then not rehired even after the charge was dropped and his accuser was arrested for allegedly stalking him.
As we’ve reported, Montbello, which was recently named Denver’s fastest growing suburb, has been fighting a reputation as a magnet of crime and recently scored a success on that count when a Sav-a-Lot grocery store opened in a neighborhood previously been a food desert. But this weekend brought a far less happy development. On Saturday night, February 3, a double homicide occurred on the same Montbello block where the body of another murder victim was dumped approximately eighteen months earlier.
In 2017, according to a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment report accessible below, 69 terminally ill Coloradans received a prescription for medication under the End of Life Options Act, a measure originally known as Proposition 106 that was approved by voters in November 2016 and went into effect the following month. Fifty of those patients obtained their prescriptions from Colorado pharmacies, and while the CDPHE doesn’t know how many used them, the department received death certificates for 56 of them.
Back in 2013, we told you about Boobies Rock!, which sent hot girls into bars to sell merchandise emblazoned with the company’s name that supposedly raised money to fight cancer — although many if not most of the proceeds allegedly went into the pocket of the organization’s founder, Adam Shryock. Over the years that followed, Shryock went to jail several times for reasons related to this and other scams, and now, he’s headed back again, for failing to file a tax return in regard to his ill-gotten gains.
The Super Bowl LII match-up between the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles, which hits American screens on Sunday, February 4, has generated little interest among folks not living in those cities, since most observers expected the Pats and rightfully hated quarterback Tom Brady to clobber a backup-QB-helmed Philly squad without breaking a sweat. But Denver Broncos fans pissed that their team didn’t get anywhere close to the big game after winning it just two short years ago should feel better after checking out the following list of the worst Super Bowls ever. After all, the Broncos played in four of them, including three of the bottom six.
At 5:30 p.m. tonight, February 2, at Colorado State University, members of an anti-fascist organization are expected to come face to face with alleged neo-Nazi recruiters from the Traditionalist Worker Party, which has been identified as a hate group fueled by white supremacist views. The potential for trouble has led CSU president Tony Frank to send out a campus-wide denunciation of the TWP that makes prominent mention of a safety plan developed in the hope of preventing violence.
Denver District Attorney Beth McCann has signed on to an amicus brief regarding The City of Los Angeles v. Jeff Sessions, a lawsuit in which L.A. is taking on the Department of Justice under President Donald Trump over a policy to base grants from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in part on whether or not municipalities aid with federal immigration enforcement. McCann says she added her name to a list of 33 prominent prosecutors and law enforcement officials nationwide despite the possibility that Sessions and company could target Denver for retaliation as a result.
According to new data released by the Colorado Department of Transportation, Colorado traffic fatalities are up 29 percent since 2014, with casualties last year reaching their highest total since 2004. In addition, CDOT has shared data about the counties and cities in the state with the most traffic deaths overall and separate statistics about the incidents that involved an impaired driver. Many but not all of the places with the worst figures can be traced to the Denver metro area.
Hours after Denver Environmental Health announced a ban on the sale of kratom for human consumption in the city late last yeaer, DEH representatives allegedly stormed into a local business selling the herbal substance, which has gained popularity for its pain-relieving effects, and ordered stock valued in the thousands of dollars to be destroyed on the spot. A lawyer for the shop managed to stop that from happening, and he’s now preparing for a February 8 appeal hearing over what went down.
On January 30, Tom Tancredo announced that he was dropping out of the 2018 Colorado governor’s race, and in talking about his reasons for doing so, he speaks in the sort of unfiltered manner that is incredibly rare for any politician, no matter his ideological beliefs. Take these comments about the angry mood among some members of the electorate as epitomized by Internet trolls.
Mere months after getting a tattoo on the left side of his chest that read, “Save Your Heart for Someone Who Leaves You Breathless,” Corey Clemons’s heart stopped. In the immediate aftermath of his fatal shooting in Aurora two years ago, few details were released, and that remained the case even after Lloyd Rickey Henderson was arrested and charged with the crime days later. But now, in the wake of Henderson’s conviction and sentencing, we know that the gunman felled Clemons in front of his mother after using a bullet to intervene in a clash between her son and her live-in boyfriend that both parties would have otherwise survived.
At this writing, former Denver disc jockey David Mueller, who singer Taylor Swift said “grabbed my bare ass” at a Pepsi Center concert in 2013, is on the air at his new station, KIX 92.7 in Greenwood, Mississippi, and trying his damnedest to dodge controversy. During the portions of the broadcast we heard, Mueller, referring to himself simply as Jackson (and not Stonewall Jackson, as has been widely reported), studiously avoided any mention of the angry pop star looming over his career while hosting one of the most awkward and boring shows in the history of radio.
The 2018 race for governor of Colorado just got a lot less interesting. Tom Tancredo has reportedly dropped out of the contest, citing an inability to raise enough money for him to be competitive.
Harold Mortis has been sentenced to forty years in prison for the 2016 murder of Tyrone Adair Jr., a performer better known to local music lovers as BossMan Goodie. But Mortis’s senseless act also played a major part in the death of Cold Crush, the hip-hop club where the slaying took place, even though the nightspot didn’t close for good until nearly a year later.
We recently shared information with you about the ten Denver neighborhoods where rent prices rose the fastest in 2017. Now, we offer the other side of the coin — the ten neighborhoods in Denver proper where rent fell by the largest percentage.
According to a just released final report from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC), 27-year-old Durango resident Abel Palmer did almost everything right on January 21, when he and a companion chose to partake in some backcountry skiing between Red Mountain Pass and the Town of Silverton, in an area known to locals as Sam’s Trees. But one small mistake, during which he accidentally entered an area he hadn’t planned to enter, led to him becoming the first person in Colorado to die in an avalanche during 2018.
On June 28, 2017, Eric Ashby went missing in the Arkansas River while reportedly searching for a $2 million treasure hidden by New Mexico author Forrest Fenn. Four weeks or so afterward, human remains were found on the river in Fremont County, and just shy of six months later, they’ve finally been identified as Ashby. He is now officially the third person from Colorado to perish while looking for this prize during a period of about a year and a half.
On Halloween night of 2015, 34-year-old Richard Darling allegedly committed a truly horrific crime. He was accused of murdering an acquaintance, Rey Pesina, then dismembering and “filleting” his body before putting it in a barrel and setting it ablaze. More than two years later, Darling has been found guilty of first degree murder, and in the wake of the verdict, the 18th Judicial District DA’s office released his arrest affidavit, which offers shocking details on the circumstances that led to Pesina’s death.
A new survey maintains that nearly half of all marijuana users in legal cannabis states such as Colorado have gone to work high, and of those who’ve done so, 39 percent of them are stoned on the job at least once a week. But the unscientific poll can hardly been seen as the definitive word on a subject that’s stirred controversy here for years.
After Joshua Cummings was arrested for the January 31, 2017, execution-style slaying of RTD security officer Scott Von Lanken, his statements about being a soldier for the Islamic state suggested that the killing might have been an act of terrorism. But at trial, the simple, shocking facts of the case, not ISIS, took center stage, and at the conclusion of a brisk three day’s worth of hearings, Cummings was found guilty of first-degree murder.
Amazon has named Denver one of twenty finalists as a possible location for its second headquarters, HQ2, a facility that’s expected to create 50,000 new jobs and result in a $5 billion investment for the winner. But while entrepreneur and Republican candidate for governor Victor Mitchell says he thinks HQ2 would be good for the state, unlike plenty of naysayers, he’s launched an online ad campaign and petition calling on officials such as Governor John Hickenlooper not to get suckered into an expensive bidding war to secure this prize.
