Christina FourHorn was home showering in Sterling when three cops came knocking at her door.
The wife and mom with no criminal record got hauled off to jail for five days for attacking and robbing a man she never met.
“You hear stories like this, and you think it could never happen to you,” she says.
Denver since has cleared Four Horn in a case of mistaken identity resulting from stunningly sloppy police work.
In March 2006, a Denver man told police he was attacked and robbed by his girlfriend, Christin (with no “a” at the end) Fourhorn (with a lowercase “h”), with whom he had been living for three weeks. She was described as 26 years old, weighing 160 pounds, having lived in Oklahoma and with a tattoo of her daughter on her left arm.
Detective Mark Dalvit searched Colorado’s motor vehicle database and came across Christina Four Horn.
He then reported that the victim identified her — using her name and date of birth — as the “girlfriend/suspect” who attacked him. That false information was used to secure an arrest warrant.
Never mind that Four Horn spells her name differently.
Never mind that she is seven years older and weighs 90 pounds more.
And never mind she never lived in Oklahoma and has no tattoo on her arm.
Had Dalvit checked out those discrepancies — or showed FourHorn’s photo to the victim, or even contacted FourHorn herself — it would have been clear he had the wrong woman.
Instead, last March, police arrested FourHorn, who is married, in front of her neighbors, held her for three nights in Logan County Jail, then drove her in shackles to Denver.
She tried to explain that she was sick at home the week of the attack. She said that because she worked nights caring for disabled adults, there was no way she could have lived a double life, let alone with a man she never met. Besides, she told police, she avoids traveling to Denver because the big city stresses her out.
“Nobody would hear me,” she says.
The biggest blow came when she says police asserted they knew she had had an affair with the victim. Then, in a twist out of Kafka, she says a detective showed her a photo of the victim with his alleged attacker, actually insisting the woman was FourHorn.
She was charged with robbery involving domestic violence and bonded out with money her husband had to borrow. District attorney’s officials finally dropped the charge, but without even notifying her, she says.
By the time she learned her name was cleared, she had missed more than two weeks of work and was a day away from losing her job.
“It was just one gigantic nightmare,” she says.
What is perhaps scariest of all, her legal team at the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado notes, is that FourHorn isn’t alone.
Denver police last year paid $18,000 in damages and legal fees for wrongly jailing an Aurora woman after an officer incorrectly identified her as a suspect.
In this case, Detective Dalvit “followed our investigative procedures in locating this person,” according to Detective Sharon Hahn.
Police departments do make mistakes. That’s why arrest warrants — prepared by law enforcement officers and, in theory, scrutinized by the judges who sign them — must be executed with care.
“Little mistakes can have huge impact,” FourHorn says. “They need to get it right.”
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
