Over the past couple of weeks, information has emerged about a bizarre series of events in Summit County. At the center of them is Tyrus Vanmatre, a twenty-year-old from Littleton who’s gone from being a hockey standout and aspiring actor/model to an arrestee for allegedly attacking a teenager with a…
Prostitution stings remain controversial in part because many observers see such acts as victimless crimes — except when a sex worker is the victim. That was allegedly the case for a 28-year-old woman, who says she was brought from Missouri to Colorado and forced to prostitute herself — offenses for…
There were two violent flare-ups over the weekend, with a total of four people shot. In the first incident, one person has died. In the second, police believe one of the wounded is a victim while the other is a suspect. Details below…
As part of our coverage of last week’s shooting at Red Rocks during the Nas-Flying Lotus-Schoolboy Q concert, we’ve shared a detailed description of the law enforcement response from Jeffco sheriff’s office rep Jacki Kelley as well as accounts from Bree Davies and Mary Willson, two Backbeat contributors who were…
Earlier this month, we checked to see how many of those listed in a 2012 post featuring Denver’s nineteen most wanted murder suspects had been caught in the succeeding two years. The answer: zero. Boulder County did a little better when it came to our fifteen most wanted sex offenders…
Last August, when eighteen-year-old Isabella Guzman was arrested for murder, an arrest affidavit on view below estimated that she’d stabbed her mom 79 times. But subsequent evaluation determined there were even more knife wounds — 151 of them in all. Now, however, a judge has accepted Guzman’s not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea in…
Editor’s note: Backbeat contributors Bree Davies and Mary Willson were at Red Rocks last week when shots were fired at an SUV whose passengers included Schoolboy Q. On Tuesday, we shared Davies’s story. This is Wilson’s account. Before being stuck in a parking lot at Red Rocks a week ago…
Back in March, we told you about the arrest of sex offender Jaacob Vanwinkle following the murder of a woman and her two kids in Canon City. The person who led to Vanwinkle’s arrest was a sixteen-year-old who he’d allegedly raped. Now, court documents reveal Vanwinkle’s plan to enter a…
In recent months, we’ve been inundated with allegations of police officers breaking bad in a big way. Note the seven Denver cops to get in trouble in 2014, another Denver officer who blamed his DUI on an imaginary friend, and an ex-cop from Walsenburg accused of dealing heroin. The latest…
Last summer, we told you about a fatal crash following a Grand Lake 4th of July fireworks display for which Lucas Ackerman had been accused of vehicular homicide, a felony, as well as driving under the influence. But what initially seemed like a straightforward case has become unexpectedly complicated. Earlier…
We’ve been reporting about a triple shooting at Red Rocks last week in which hip-hop artist Schoolboy Q was the likely target. Two Westword writers were caught in the delays that followed the incident, including our Bree Davies, who says she didn’t get out of the area until 2:30 a.m…
Update: Last week, we told you about a lawsuit accusing Colorado Department of Corrections personnel with allowing mentally ill inmate Christopher Lopez to die while they watched; see our previous coverage below. Now, attorney David Lane has released a 47 minute video that compiles shocking footage from Lopez’s final hours…
In April, when we posted about what was reported as the second attack on sex offender Zachary Meints in nine days, we noted that the Boulder Police Department didn’t believe there was a threat to public safety “perhaps due to their theory that Meints was specifically targeted, or maybe because…
Editor’s note: Backbeat contributor Bree Davies was at Red Rocks last week when shots were fired at an SUV whose passengers included Schoolboy Q. This is her story. When I left the Flying Lotus/Nas/Schoolboy Q show last Thursday night at Red Rocks, nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary. My…
As we’ve reported, authorities looking into last week’s triple shooting at Red Rocks now believe the target was likely Schoolboy Q, one of the show’s headliners. He was uninjured, but three other people joining him in a bullet-riddled SUV were hurt. Now, investigators are looking at a possible connection between…
Early this morning, a man opened the door of his Denver home and was greeted in the most unpleasant way imaginable — by a bullet to the chest. At this writing, the man is said to be in critical condition but is expected to survive. Here’s what we know thus…
Update: Randy Bender’s last Facebook profile photo features him posing alongside a gravestone. Now, however, Bender himself is dead, the victim of a shooting at an extended stay motel about which we reported last week; see our previous coverage below. Police don’t believe Bender was a victim of a random…
Update: On Friday, we offered an early report about a triple shooting at Red Rocks following a concert by Nas, Flying Lotus and Schoolboy Q — a story that was expanded upon on our Backbeat blog. Since then, authorities have confirmed that bullets struck an SUV in which Schoolboy Q…
James Holmes’s attorneys are accusing state prosecutors of discouraging Aurora theater shooting victims from talking to them, according to a motion filed this week (and on view below). They argue that prosecutor Lisa Teesch-Maguire sent an e-mail to victims with the message that efforts by Holmes’s attorneys to contact them…
Editor’s note: Click to see the latest update about the Red Rocks shooting on our Backbeat blog. According to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, three people were shot following the Nas-Flying Lotus-Schoolboy Q concert at Red Rocks last night — a trio who were found in a vehicle on 6th…
No denying that Idaho Springs’ Haley Stanfield, twenty, has suffered a terrible loss — the death last month of her fifteen-month-old son, Logan Borchik. But she now stands accused of attempting to turn her grief into vengeance by hiring Logan’s father to kill her current boyfriend, who is said to…
Michael Clapper, 24, made headlines in 2011 after being at the center of Occupy Denver’s eviction from Civic Center Park — a police action that ended in flames, arrests and Tebowing. Now he’s making news of a different, and particularly vile, sort. He’s one of two men arrested and charged…
