NORTHGLENN — Two young children are still recovering from severe injuries, nearly a week and a half after police say their father barricaded them inside their home and set the home on fire in Northglenn.
Saturday, their mother, Rosie Jungst-Johnson, still had questions for her children’s father, Bill Johnson, her estranged husband, about what happened.
“How could you do that to your own kids?” she said. “I don’t know.”
Around 2 a.m. on Feb. 23, Jungst-Johnson said she was at a friend’s house in Aurora when she heard her phone ring.
She hung up and then heard a noise.
“I said, ‘Oh, my God, it’s Bill, crashing into my car,’ ” Jungst-Johnson said.
She immediately called Aurora police. When they showed up, she asked them to do something, not knowing if her kids were in the car.
“He hit my car,” she said. “I mean, that’s a violent, violent act.”
Her husband had already taken off for their home in Northglenn.
“I had Northglenn do a welfare check on the kids,” she said.
Police there pulled him over and called the Aurora officer investigating.
“I can tell you that when our officers contacted the vehicle, all the children inside the car were safe,” Northglenn Police Cmdr. Jeremy Sloan said last week at a news conference after the fire.
The Aurora police officer told Northglenn officers to let Johnson go, both agencies have said.
The officer did not have enough information yet and wrapped up her investigation around 4 a.m.
“I immediately got in my car and drove back up to Northglenn,” Jungst-Johnson said. “He must have heard me open the garage door.”
Back at her house, she saw his Mitsubishi, some smoke and then him.
“He had grabbed my head and brought it over into the passenger side and beat me for several minutes,” she said.
Jungst-Johnson had severe injuries to her head but still managed to call 911.
“Finally, he just stopped. Just stopped out of nowhere and ran back into the house,” she said. “All I could see was smoke.”
Bill Johnson had barricaded himself inside and started a fire. Police had to break down the door.
They got her son, a toddler, out. They got Johnson out.
“Unfortunately, (my daughter) was the last one out of the house,” Jungst-Johnson said. “Fifty percent of her body is burned.”
The 5-year-old girl is still on ventilators in the hospital. She must have multiple skin-graft surgeries.
The boy is able to breathe on his own but still has severe injuries from smoke inhalation.
Johnson, his estranged wife says, is still in critical condition.
Jungst-Johnson says her husband seemed different that day. She had just filed for divorce in January.
“He wanted to get reconciled, basically, and I said that’s not going to happen,” she said.
She also questioned the original events in Aurora.
“Why wouldn’t that officer take me seriously when I said there’s something wrong with these kids?” she said.
Yet Aurora police officials say the officer did everything she could with the information she had.
“If we could have done something different, we would admit that,” said Aurora police Sgt. Casidee Carlson. “We would come forward with that.”
Still, the ultimate question is for Bill Johnson.
“I want to know why. Why would you do that to your kids?” Jungst Johnson said.
The woman he was married to for five years can only wonder.
“He attempted to kill his own children, to spite me,” she said.
Two funds are set up for the young children.
Donations are being accepted for the “Little Heroes Fund” at any Wells Fargo branch or the Rosie Johnson Fund 1st Bank Branch.
