Chuck E. Cheese killer Nathan Dunlap was sent to Denver to receive medical treatment earlier this month while he was on a 24-day hunger strike, state officials said.
Dunlap, 33, the only inmate facing execution in Colorado, was taken to the Department of Corrections’ Denver Diagnostic and Reception Center on Aug. 2, said Katherine Sanguinetti, DOC spokeswoman. “We were able to treat him,” Sanguinetti said.
He ended the hunger strike the next day and was returned on Aug. 10 to Colorado State Prison, the state’s maximum-security facility in Cañon City, she said.
Dunlap was convicted in the murder of four workers at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora in 1993. The state Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence in May and ordered an execution date to be set.
Two months later, on July 10, Dunlap began his hunger strike, Sanguinetti said.
For 24 days, he did not eat any food and only drank water, she said. Sanguinetti said she does not know Dunlap’s reason for the hunger strike, his second in about three years.
“I don’t think anybody but our medical staff knows, and that would be confidential,” she said.
DOC has the right to feed prisoners intravenously if needed to keep them alive, Sanguinetti said. However, because of confidentiality rules, she could not say whether that is what happened with Dunlap.
Dunlap’s attorneys are continuing the appeals process.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
