Christopher Booker, roughly four months , seriously injuring one of them, appeared in court Thursday morning where he was ordered held on $50,000 bond.
Booker, 42, is being held on suspicion of first-degree assault, vehicular assault, forgery and attempt to influence a public servant. Witnesses say Booker had a “medical condition” — what appeared to be a seizure — when he struck the officers.
“We intend to argue bond,” Booker’s public defender said during the brief hearing, referring to Booker’s next court appearance.
Booker, clad in gray jail dress, did not speak during the brief appearance, but objected through his public defender to a television camera recording the hearing. The judge allowed the camera.
Mitch Morrissey, Denver’ s district attorney, said Wednesday the arrest stems from medical documents showing but did not disclose his condition when applying nine times for driver’s licenses between 2006 and 2015.
He said his office plans to file 20 formal counts against Booker.
“It is our position that he operated a motor vehicle knowing that he suffered from a medical condition that made him unsafe to drive and therefore showing universal malice,” Morrissey said at a news conference.
Morrissey says the investigation took as long as it did because of an “extensive review of the medical records” and that officials combed through “every medical record that we could get to make this filing correct.” Booker’s Division of Motor Vehicle records also were examined.
Booker is being held at Denver’s downtown detention center, jail records show.
The bicycle officers whom Booker hit were monitoring student protesters from East High School on Dec. 3 along East Colfax Avenue near Williams Street. The collision happened over police actions across the country against unarmed black men.
The collision left Officer John Adsit , during which he underwent 11 surgeries to repair crushed ribs, a punctured lung, a severed artery in his leg, a broken femur and a cracked pelvis. The officer’s spleen was removed, and he battled internal bleeding, pneumonia, vision loss, fever and infection.
Adsit, a nine-year veteran of the department, was the only one of the four officers to be injured seriously in the collision. He was dragged for more than a dozen yards under the black Mercedes that Booker was driving.
Adsit was last month.
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or twitter.com/JesseAPaul
