Denver police said today that they don’t have enough evidence to charge a former Longmont police officer with stealing a pain-medication pump from an unconscious U.S. Marine as he lay in a hospital bed last month.
But 58-year-old Linda Coulimore has not been cleared in the case.
“We’re not there yet,” Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said. “It means this is an active investigation, and we’re not yet able to name a suspect, but we’re not yet ruling anybody out, either.
“It just says we need a little more information.”
Coulimore called the Weld County Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 30 and was arrested at her home in Mead after Denver police named her as a person of interest in the case.
That came three days after the pump, and the powerful narcotics it contained, were stolen from the bedside of the serviceman at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center in Denver.
The Marine, who lost a limb in combat in Iraq, was unconscious after surgery when the woman took the pump.
Surveillance cameras captured photos of a woman fitting Coulimore’s description.
She fits the profile in other ways as well.
Investigators think the woman in the photos has a background in medicine because she knew how to find the pump and remove it quickly. Coulimore is a former emergency medical technician for Flight for Life and had recently taken nursing classes at Regis University.
Family members told The Denver Post at the time of her arrest that Coulimore had been regularly using strong painkillers since 1966, when she was thrown out of a car during an accident in Longmont.
Neither Coulimore nor family members could be reached Wednesday night.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Denver Police Department at 720-913-2000 or Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174
