It may not be good for his business, but Joshua Hunt, the co-founder and CEO of the local real estate brokerage TRELORA, says that for a significant number of people in Denver, including many of those who’ve just moved to the Mile High City, renting makes more sense than buying.
Today, jury selection begins in the court battle between former Denver DJ David Mueller and pop star Taylor Swift; he claims she got him fired by falsely accusing him of groping her prior to a June 2013 concert at the Pepsi Center, while she maintains that Muller “reached up under my skirt and grabbed my ass right when I was having to pose for a photo” that was subsequently made public against the wishes of all parties involved. The controversy has resulted in the biggest celebrity trial in Denver since 1994, when King of Pop Michael Jackson was hauled into court after being accused of plagiarism by Crystal Cartier, a local singer-songwriter.
Gun violence is a common occurrence in Colorado. In July, at least 67 incidents involving guns took place across the state. Not all of them resulted in injury or death, but each could have. See where they happened here.
Skeletal remains found near South Boulder Creek east of Gross Reservoir have been formally identified as Ryder Johnson, who vanished on January 17, 2016 after a day of work at Eldora ski resort. Johnson’s family, which offered a six-figure reward in connection with his disappearance, have released a statement expressing a mixture of grief and relief over confirmation of a fate members had long feared.
The Denver Police Department has expanded its body-worn-camera program to include members of the SWAT team. However, the policy’s fine print reveals that the cameras won’t be routinely used during tactical operations, when SWAT officers may be put in the position of using force. The man in charge of the DPD’s body-worn camera program justifies this exception by saying that criminals could use such footage to their advantage.
Among those at the center of an unprecedented lawsuit filed against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over federal scheduling of marijuana is Alexis Bortell, eleven, who had to move with her family from Texas to the Colorado community of Larkspur in order to legally use medical cannabis, which has eliminated the epileptic seizures she regularly suffered. As such, she represents a group of patients that her lawyer, Michael Hiller, describes as “medical marijuana refugees.”
A thus-far-unidentified 27-year-old man is suspected of having drowned after leaping from a cliff-jumping site at Green Mountain Reservoir in Summit County. The fatality is at least the fifteenth at a Colorado water attraction this year, and like Haley Clarke’s jumping-the-falls death in 2016, it spotlights the risks of extreme diving.
What’s it like to be summoned to the White House? For Rick Enstrom, a longtime figure in Colorado Republican politics, an invitation to attend an August 1 forum about small businesses like Enstrom Candies, the longtime Colorado enterprise he helps run, was an opportunity to get another angle on the administration of President Donald Trump — one that doesn’t have anything to do with investigations into possible collusion with Russia or the other assorted controversies that have dominated coverage by most major media outlets other than Fox News, which caught Enstrom on camera at the event.
This weekend, skeletal remains were found near South Boulder Creek east of Gross Reservoir. The area is not far from where Ryder Johnson vanished on January 17, 2016, after leaving his job at Eldora ski area.
There’s good news and bad news in Zumper’s report about rent prices in Denver during the summer of 2017. The good news is that the average cost of renting a one-bedroom apartment in the most expensive Denver neighborhood circa spring of this year has actually fallen by nearly $100 in three months, and there have been similar declines in three other top-ten areas. The bad news is that prices are up in six of the ten priciest neighborhoods, a couple of them by almost $200 over that same period.
John Bowlen, son of Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen, has been named in a Colorado arrest warrant following his weekend arrest in California for driving under the influence; see our previous coverage below. In the document, also accessible here, Arapahoe Count Judge Darren Louis Vahle counts five ways in which the younger Bowlen violated his probation for a domestic violence incident involving booze and whippets back in 2015.
Keith Hammock has been found guilty of second-degree murder and more for killing one teenager and wounding another last October after they’d jumped a fence into his backyard, where he was growing marijuana. The verdict demonstrates the limitations of Colorado’s famous Make My Day law, especially when it comes to pot grows deemed illegal.
Wednesday, August 2, will mark the grand opening of youbaby Skin Spa, a new business in Lafayette whose specialties include tattoo removal. In advance of the big event, co-owners and sisters Susan Melching and Nina Smith spoke with us about the ten most common reasons people in Colorado (and plenty of other places, in all likelihood) decide to have their tattoos removed.
Darius Ratcliff has been found guilty of first-degree assault against the peace officer who shot him on July 31, 2016, the day before his twentieth birthday. Exactly a year later, on this July 31, he’ll be back in court for a hearing related to a separate murder charge. And that prosecution will be followed by four more related to multiple counts of attempted murder and burglary, as well as a failed escape attempt.
In the days following our July 25 report that Eric Ashby, 31, had gone missing after a late June accident on the Arkansas River while searching for a $2 million treasure allegedly hidden by New Mexico author Forrest Fenn, the story has gone national, with outlets such as Good Morning America telling the tale. And the interest in what may be the third death related to the treasure hunt has accelerated after thus-far-unidentified human remains were found along the Arkansas River, where Ashby disappeared.
On Sunday, July 30, my wife Deb and I missed by approximately five minutes being involved in a horrific traffic accident on Interstate 70 near the 40 East exit that killed two people and injured six. As such, we were in the first wave of travelers stuck in a mammoth traffic jam resulting from eastbound I-70’s closure, which lasted just over seven hours. The incident took place at what may be the worst possible place for such an incident in the Denver area, and at the worst possible time, when thousands of people were returning to the city from a summer weekend in the mountains.
Steffan Tubbs, longtime host of KOA’s Colorado Morning News, was reportedly arrested early Sunday, July 30, on suspicion of domestic violence, disturbance via phone. While local law enforcement hasn’t released an official report about the arrest at this writing, the charge typically involves a threat delivered either by voice or text message.
Even with more than 13,000 new apartment units expected to be available in metro Denver by the end of 2017, rent prices remain high in the city and suburbs, with a two-bedroom in the priciest current neighborhood going for nearly $3,000 per month. But that’s a bargain compared to the most expensive condos available in Denver right now. Indeed, the rent for one of them actually hits the five-figure mark.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit has affirmed the conviction of Harold Henthorn, who authorities say killed his second wife, Dr. Toni Henthorn, by pushing her off Deer Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park in 2012. In so doing, the jurists unanimously rejected Henthorn’s argument that the original court biased the jury against him by allowing testimony about the suspicious death of Henthorn’s first wife, Lynn, and a serious accident suffered by Toni the year before her death.
A settlement has been reached in the case of Grant Neal, a CSU Pueblo student and football player who was suspended for what a witness believed was a non-consensual sexual encounter with a female athletic trainer. But as part of the pact, neither the university nor Neal’s legal representatives will say how the matter was resolved or if any money changed hands.
This morning, July 27, AM 760, an iHeartMedia station that experienced a major shakeup just over three months ago with the departure of former wide receiver turned broadcaster Ed McCaffrey, as described in our previous coverage, on view below, has undergone a format flip. The outlet’s mix of syndicated programming and local sports coverage has been revamped as Orange & Blue Radio, whose sole focus will be the Denver Broncos.
Pit bulls are banned in eight Colorado cities, with the policy having resulted in thousands of dogs from the breed getting euthanized in Denver alone over the years. But far from being outlawed, a dog named Kara is actually enforcing the law as the only official narcotics-detection pit bull for a state law-enforcement agency, the all-volunteer Colorado Mounted Rangers.
