Boulder – Police are investigating two more racially motivated crimes that came to light since the attack June 3 on a black University of Colorado student.
Both incidents were reported Tuesday, with one seen as possibly related to the attack on CU student Andrew Sterling.
Sterling told police he and a friend were walking home early Friday when a passenger in a passing van yelled a racial epithet at him. The van pulled into a parking lot near the corner of 11th Street and Arapahoe Avenue between 1:45 and 2:15 a.m.
The passenger yelled at him from the van, exited and then punched Sterling twice in the face, breaking Sterling’s jaw, police said. The van is described as maroon and similar to a conversion van, and it may have some striping down the side, Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner said Friday.
The license plate on the van is believed to be a Colorado plate beginning with “92.”
A woman told police she was harassed by two men in a maroon van with similar striping while walking on a sidewalk in a neighborhood a few blocks north of 28th and Iris streets May 30.
“It’s possible we have some connection with the two cases,” Beckner said. “But we don’t know for sure.”
The woman, a 32-year-old African- American, said the van pulled by her once and someone inside either spit or threw something at her. The van passed by again, and someone inside yelled racial epithets at her, Beckner said.
She described the van as a late-1980s model with a thick orange stripe on the side that curved downward.
On June 4, a 33-year-old white woman said she was pinned to her car in a parking lot in the 2500 block of Ninth Street. A man put his hand over her mouth and made several racially motivated statements, Beckner said. The woman has biracial children.
“These types of incidents will not be tolerated in Boulder,” Beckner said.
Seven investigators are working on the cases. Aside from those three cases, Boulder has had six cases of ethnic intimidation since 2003, said police spokeswoman Julie Brooks.
Anyone with information about the cases is asked to call Detective Chuck Heidel at 303-441-3339 or Boulder County CrimeStoppers at 303-440-7867.
Staff writer Monte Whaley can be reached at 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com.
