Within minutes of deadline, couple claim Lotto jackpot
An Arvada couple have been millionaires since June and didn’t even know it.
Leslie and Rich Crosby, who unknowingly had a winning lottery ticket worth $4.6 million stashed in their kitchen, scrambled to claim their jackpot late Monday, minutes before the 180-day period to claim their prize expired at midnight.
“We are pretty dumbfounded,” Leslie Crosby said Tuesday. She said her husband learned about the unclaimed ticket on Fox 31 News on Monday night. They decided to check their stack of lottery tickets and discovered they had a winner. They rushed to a local convenience store, verifying their claim at 11:17 p.m., according to state lottery officials.
“We were certainly surprised someone claimed it,” said Kristen Shew, Colorado Lottery spokeswoman. “We thought someone had just forgotten about it.”
The couple bought the ticket, a Quick Pick, at the BP Split Second gas station on North Wadsworth Boulevard in Arvada. They chose the cash option, which totaled $1,628,204 after taxes. The winning numbers from the June 8 drawing were 2, 6, 7, 9, 20 and 21.
Rich, 46, is a truck driver, and Leslie, 36, works at a real estate title company. They have a 4-year-old son, for whom they plan to start a college fund. They plan to keep working.
COLORADO
Tougher child-sex, predator rules sought
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers will seek tougher penalties for Internet criminals and better management of sexually violent predators when the legislature reconvenes in January.
In a wide-ranging news conference Tuesday, the state’s top cop said he will work with lawmakers to make it a felony to solicit sex from a minor over the Internet.
“Believe it or not, presently, it is not a crime to sexually solicit a minor on the Internet unless something takes place subsequent, like a meeting,” Suthers said.
The proposal will also increase the penalty for possessing child pornography from a misdemeanor to a felony, he said.
The attorney general said he is also working to implement reforms of how the state tracks sexually violent predators – the worst rapists and child molesters.
Earlier this year, Gov. Bill Owens appointed Suthers to head a task force charged with cleaning up problems uncovered by The Denver Post, namely that the Department of Corrections had not done evaluations required before sex offenders are released.
The proposed legislation would require the probation department to do the evaluation at the time of sentencing, Suthers said. The proposal would also make it clear that community notification is mandatory when a sexually violent predator moves into a neighborhood.
DENVER
Attorney appointed to Water Board post
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper appointed attorney Harris Sherman to the Denver Water Board on Tuesday.
Sherman is a senior partner in the Denver law office of Arnold & Porter.
“There are few individuals who can match Harris Sherman’s expertise on Colorado water issues,” Hickenlooper said.
From 1975 to 1980, Sherman was executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. He has also served as chairman of the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission and the Colorado State University Water Resources Research Institute Advisory Committee.
Sherman replaces Bill Roberts, who resigned.
DENVER
Hurricane forecast: 2006 less ferocious
Next year’s hurricane season could be a bad one, but it probably won’t be as destructive as this year, researchers at Colorado State University said Tuesday.
The hurricane season of 2005 was the costliest, most destructive season ever, CSU researchers Philip Klotzbach, William Gray and their colleagues reported.
In the team’s first forecast for 2006, the scientists predicted that 17 named storms will form in the Atlantic between June 1 and Nov. 30, with nine of those becoming hurricanes, five of them major hurricanes with sustained winds 111 mph and greater. On average, about 6 hurricanes form per year.
The 2005 season saw 26 named storms and 14 hurricanes, seven of them major. Insured damages totaled at least $46.3 billion, according to the Property Claim Services branch of the risk analysis firm ISO.
DENVER
Police Internet skills help avert tragedy
Investigators with the Denver police computer crime unit helped avoid a tragedy Monday when they helped find a woman who was threatening suicide while she was chatting with another person on the Internet.
Nick Money, an 18-year-old from Anchorage, called Denver police to tell them he was worried about an 18-year-old girl from Denver he was chatting with. He told police she had threatened suicide.
Investigators were able to develop enough information through the woman’s e-mails and online chat records to find that she lived in Barron, Wis.
They contacted the woman at the address and learned she was actually a 16-year-old girl in counseling for emotional issues.
The investigators reported a positive outcome to the incident.
AURORA
Three arrested in 2003 stabbing death
After two years of investigating the beating and stabbing death of 24-year-old Steven Zubia, Aurora police detectives have arrested three men on suspicion of murder.
Luis A. Balmaceda, 19, and Daniel R. Castro, 21, were arrested over the weekend. Alex E. Obando, 20, turned himself in at police headquarters on Monday.
All three men were indicted on charges of first-degree murder, second-degree murder and first-degree assault by an Arapahoe County grand jury on Dec. 2.
Zubia was killed Nov. 28, 2003.
He was found stabbed and screaming after a fight that occurred earlier in the evening.
JEFFERSON COUNTY
Commission shrinks budget for 2006
A $473.7 million budget for 2006 was approved Tuesday by the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners.
The budget calls for $75.4 million less spending than in 2005, with the capital improvement budget reduced 46 percent.
Forty-seven county jobs will be eliminated by not filling vacancies and through attrition, although 31 people will be hired in several departments, including the sheriff’s and district attorney’s offices.
