Grass fire scorches 50 acres of open space
Fort Collins – A grass fire Saturday afternoon scorched about 50 acres on the Cathy Fromme Prairie open space south of a Taft Canyon neighborhood.
“It was a pretty good size grass fire,” said Jason Mantas, a spokesman with the Poudre Fire Authority. Fire officials said it started about 3:30 p.m. They suspect it was touched off by a discarded cigarette butt.
No homes were threatened and no families had to be evacuated, officials said.
Shots fired from car seriously wound man
A Denver man was in serious condition Saturday after being shot at least twice in a parking lot at the Spyglass Hill apartments.
Just after 3 p.m., two men fired multiple shots at the victim before driving away in a white Cad illac, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said.
Resident Mathew Topping, who saw the victim, said the man had been shot in the front and back of his torso.
Police did not release the man’s name. Jackson said the shooting did not appear to be random.
Accused cop killer’s hearing postponed
A judge Friday granted a two-month postponement in the preliminary hearing for the man accused of fatally shooting Denver Detective Donald Young and wounding his partner, Jack Bishop.
The two detectives, who were providing security at a party, were ambushed May 8, allegedly by Raul Gomez-Garcia, 20. Gomez-Garcia was captured in Mexico in June and extradited to Denver last month.
Gomez-Garcia’s preliminary hearing had been scheduled for Feb. 9. But his attorney, Fernando Freyre, told Denver District Judge Larry Naves that he had only recently been given thousands of pages of investigative files and that one of the two defense attorneys was leaving the case.
Iranian woman loses suit against attorney
An Iranian woman who blamed immigration lawyer Robert G. Heiserman for a mix-up that could result in her deportation has lost her legal malpractice lawsuit against the Denver attorney.
A Denver jury late Friday ruled in favor of Heiserman and against Afarin Kavandi, 23, following a four-day trial in Denver District Court.
Scott Jurdem, Kavandi’s lawyer, had argued that because a paralegal working for Heiserman had sent federal authorities the wrong filing fee – $36 less than required – the government had rejected Kavandi’s application to remain in the United States.
But Craig Fleishman, Heiserman’s lawyer, told the jury there is little chance she will be deported and that Heiserman has done everything he can to convince the government that the $36 filing fee error, which was rectified within days, shouldn’t result in Kavandi’s being expelled.
Judge rules priest’s hearings will be open
A Larimer County district judge ruled Friday that the public will not be shut out of court hearings for a Fort Collins Catholic priest charged with sexual abuse of a male parishioner.
Timothy Evans, 43, who served as a priest and then pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Fort Collins from 1998 to 2002, is charged with four felonies: two counts of sexual abuse of a child by a person in a position of trust, one count of a pattern of sexual abuse, and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
His attorneys, Erik Fischer and David Mestas, had filed a motion to close a preliminary hearing Friday, to which The Denver Post and the Fort Collins Coloradoan objected. Judge Jolene Blair denied the motion, citing the newspapers’ objections.
Civil Service agency pans expected move
Denver’s Civil Service Commission is continuing to express dismay about the likelihood of having to move into the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Building, despite free rent.
“What are we saving (by moving to the Webb building), a million bucks?” Commissioner Anna Flores asked at a commission meeting Friday. “I’ll bet you we can find a million bucks in this budget that is going to the suburbs.”
The mayor’s deputy chief of staff, Kelly Brough, said she struggled to understand the commissioner’s perspective “because you’ve seen the numbers,” she told them.
The city’s bill for rent has been between $360,000 and $517,000 each year for the commission’s office in west Denver. Moving to the Webb building would entail a one-time moving cost of about $30,000.
“While it may not seem like a lot of money to the commission – which is a surprise for me to hear – it’s a huge amount of money to this organization,” Brough said.
Commissioners argued that they function better at their current site, at 16th Avenue and Federal Boulevard, than they could downtown, but promised to tell the city by the end of the month what kind of space they would need in the Webb building.
