Is Denver Mayor Michael Hancock trying to downplay violent incidents on the 16th Street Mall? That’s the implication of a new report from Fox31, which quotes Hancock spokeswoman Amber Miller as turning down the station’s request for a sit-down interview with the mayor because the outlet is simply trying to “keep…
A chain restaurant in a bedroom community is among the unlikelier locations for a fatal shooting. But that’s what happened at the Pizza Ranch outlet in Loveland last night. A man who allegedly grabbed a patron at the restaurant was shot dead by a Loveland police officer. And it all…
The days of federal marijuana arrests are not over in Colorado. Alfonso Rodriguez-Vazquez and Nestor Fabian Sinaloa-Sinaloa, both Mexican nationals, found that out the hard way. They were busted in relation to a big pot grow in Routt National Forest. However, the announcement about the case from the U.S. Attorney’s…
Larry Stevenson certainly had plenty of connections. A former Denver police officer turned high-profile employee for the city’s Excise and License department, Stevenson was a personal friend of Denver mayor Michael Hancock, even serving as best man at his wedding. In addition, he created an anti-crime system known as Transportation on…
Over the years, we’ve written about a number of tragedies that occurred after parents left young children unsupervised in a bathtub. Take the 2011 case of Fort Lupton’s Shannon Johnson, whose one-year-old son drowned while she was playing Cafe World on Facebook. Within months, Johnson was sentenced to ten years behind…
Early this month, we reported about a couple attacked on the 16th Street Mall for complaining about littering, as well as complaints about a fourteen-minute delay in police response to the incident, which is said to have involved somewhere between ten and twenty teens. The couple was badly beaten and…
Another summer weekend, more reports of gun violence. The good news: No one died in two weekend shootings in Denver — at least not yet. One person was critically injured. The bad news: No suspects have been apprehended in either case — and one of the incidents took place very…
PT’s Showclub, at 1601 West Evans Avenue, is a historic venue — the former home of The Family Dog, a rock-and-roll venue that played host to late ’60s-early ’70s legends such as the Doors and the Grateful Dead before being transformed into one of the city’s longest lasting exotic-dancing joints…
Phil Garnier was listed at number eighteen on Colorado’s most recent list of its 100 most wanted sex offenders. But he won’t be there for much longer — and the reason’s not a good one. Garnier was arrested in Colorado Springs early on Wednesday, August 26, after a tipster alerted…
The first post in Westword’s Aurora Theater Shooting archive was published early on July 20, 2012. It’s very simple headline reads, “Videos: Aurora Century 16 Shooting at The Dark Knight Rises.” Since then, we’ve published hundreds of posts about the horrific acts that took place that night, with topics including the first…
Back in May, we posted about the ten Denver neighborhoods with the highest crime to that point in 2015, as measured by crime density statistics complied by the Denver Police Department. This post is both an update and a much broader look at the topic. Once again, we’ve drawn upon DPD stats…
In November 2012, we published a post entitled UNSOLVED MURDERS IN COLORADO: READ TEN MORE PERSONAL STORIES OF VICTIMS, featuring cold cases highlighted by the invaluable Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons website. Among the tragedies we featured was the murder of Carolyn Jansen, who likely died in 2003, around…
Two years ago, when we told you about the murder of Claudia Miller, a local attorney, and the subsequent arrest of Warren Watson in the case, it was already clear that the crime was extraordinarily disturbing. However, information that came out in Watson’s just-concluded trial is even creepier than we…
How do you feel about the 16th Street Mall? That’s been a big topic of discussion over the past two weeks. The day I posted this piece about ten reasons to love the mall, But even before that dismaying beating outside the Rock Bottom Brewery — and the even more…
This past Sunday, a Colorado Department of Transportation worker made a grisly discovery. A woman’s body was found along Interstate 70. Days later, the victim was identified as Maria Maricela Astorga-Chavez, a 32-year-old who’d been reported missing several days earlier. Her death is being investigated as a homicide — and the…
Over the past several days, the Denver Police Department has rounded up four suspects as part of an investigation into an alleged kidnapping and sexual assault. Three of the men — Edgar Barroso, Juvenal Tamayo and Pedro Valdez — were cuffed following a SWAT raid on Friday, August 14. Then,…
How do Colorado jails and prisons house transgender prisoners? In part, it depends on their policies. In reporting this week’s feature, “No Way Out,” we researched the policies of the federal Bureau of Prisons, the Colorado Department of Corrections and the Denver Sheriff Department, which runs the Denver County Jail…
Just yesterday, we share our list of the ten reasons to love the 16th Street Mall. But last night, something happened on this stretch that no one can love. A brawl involving a couple of diners and a group of what one witness describes as teens resulted in two injuries…
In the moments after its appearance in an announcement by the Denver coroner’s office, the name Jose Frias-Olivas didn’t score a single hit when surrounded by quotation marks for a Google search. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case — because Frias-Olivas has been identified as the victim of a weekend homicide…
Once again, the tranquility of an early morning in Denver has been shattered by gunfire. In the latest incident, a man was found shot — and while emergency responders raced him to a nearby hospital, he didn’t survive the wounds. Moreover, investigators have released no suspect information at this writing…
It could have been so much worse. Early yesterday morning, Jazmine Ramos, eleven, was shot outside her home on 47th Avenue between Race and High streets in the Elyria Swansea neighborhood — the apparent victim of a stray bullet. Fortunately, Jazmine was struck in the leg rather than another more vulnerable…
If they’re convicted, Alese Silva and Ivan Lopez could be put away for quite a long time over a crime that netted a very small reward: a car they drove for only a short distance and $80 in cash. The pair are accused of kidnapping two people over this sum…
