The man was and was hit around 2:05 a.m. while walking across East Arapahoe Road, the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office said on social media.

When deputies arrived, they attempted life-saving measures, but the man died at the scene, officials said.

The driver of the vehicle who hit the pedestrian is not facing criminal charges at this time. The driver remained on scene and cooperated with investigators. The incident remains as an open and active investigation by the Traffic Safety Unit.

All eastbound lanes of Arapahoe Road were closed for several hours between South Parker Road and South Lewiston Way.

Arapahoe sheriff deputies and South Metro Fire Rescue were on scene. The sheriff’s office said they reopened all lanes around 5:17 a.m.

This is a developing story and may be updated. 

Max Arsenault, 33, was arrested in MedellĂ­n, Colombia, on March 4 and extradited to Colorado, . As of Wednesday, the man was in custody and awaiting trial at the Arapahoe County Detention Center, .

Arapahoe County deputies responded to a medical call in the 21000 block of East Otero Parkway on May 7, 2023, . When they arrived, deputies found an unresponsive Nicholas Dorotik, 47, who died from a mixed-drug overdose at the scene, sheriff’s officials said.

Dorotik had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system, including three times the amount of fentanyl that can cause a fatal overdose, according to the sheriff’s office.

Arsenault and Julia Weishaar were arrested and charged in August 2024 with manslaughter and 10 felony drug charges in Dorotik’s death, including distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death and conspiracy to distribute, according to Arapahoe County court records.

Weishaar took a deal and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute fentanyl resulting in death, a class one drug felony, in October 2025, court records show. The deal dismissed all other charges, including manslaughter, and she was sentenced to 10 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Arsenault fled the country on Jan. 17 while out on bail and failed to appear for his pre-trial readiness conference on Jan. 20, according to court records. His jury trial was scheduled to begin on Jan. 27.

As of Wednesday, a new jury trial had been scheduled for September, court records show, though additional charges may be added to Arsenault’s case. The man is now under investigation for four felony charges related to fleeing the country: two counts each of failure to appear and fugitive of justice, according to inmate records.

“This arrest sends a clear message: our agency is committed to holding those accountable in fentanyl-related deaths to protect our community from this deadly substance,” Arapahoe County Sheriff Tyler Brown .

The two teens, who were not identified by police because they are juveniles, were arrested on charges of false reporting of explosives and false reporting of an active shooter, both felonies, and interference with staff or faculty of an educational facility, a misdemeanor, the said Wednesday evening.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers from across metro Denver responded to Adams City High, 7200 Quebec Parkway, around 1 p.m. after someone called 911 to report a bomb at the school and the presence of an active shooter, with wounded people supposedly inside the facility, authorities said.

Officials put the school on lockdown, with students and staff secured inside classrooms. Adams City High currently enrolls 1,422 students, according to state records.

Police entered the school, going room to room to clear the building and look for a shooter and any victims, officials said.

Once inside, officers found “what appeared to be a blood trail in several areas of the school,” Commerce City police said.

After searching the school for two hours, police determined there were no victims and no real threat. But they found and arrested two students “who were covered in what looked like fake blood — the same substance officers had encountered in parts of the building,” police said.

“For many, calls of this nature are their worst nightmare,” Commerce City police Chief Darrel Guadnola said in a statement. “Whether a first responder, a parent, a teacher or a student — most will never forget this day. The notion that this call may have been part of a prank is highly disturbing and pulled valuable law enforcement resources away from real emergencies in the Denver metro.”

No students were injured during the lockdown, but one experienced an unrelated medical issue and was transported to a hospital by paramedics as a precaution, . That student was later released to their parents.

District officials also noted that social media posts shared by people who weren’t employees of the district spread inaccurate information that may have alarmed families.

“Adams 14 encourages the public to avoid sharing unverified information on social media during incidents, as it can unintentionally increase fear and confusion for families, divert law enforcement resources and place additional strain on those working to protect students,” Adams 14 officials said in their statement.

Law enforcement officers from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office, Colorado State Patrol, Westminster Police Department, Thornton Police Department, RTD Police Department, Arvada Police Department, Aurora Police Department, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the school.

The older brother was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of first-degree murder and is being held at the Marvin W. Foote Youth Services Center in Centennial, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.

Neither child has been publicly identified, though the 5-year-old boy was a kindergartener at Timberline Elementary, Principal Mary Bowens wrote in a Wednesday email to parents.

Authorities responded to the boy’s home, a rental property in the 5200 block of South Jericho Way, at about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, . The street, filled with single-family homes with wide driveways and green yards, remained closed Wednesday afternoon as the investigation continued.

Authorities have not said how the killing unfolded or offered any details about the attack. Arapahoe County Sheriff’s spokesman Anders Nelson declined to offer any information on the nature of the 5-year-old’s injuries or say why investigators considered the death to be first-degree murder, citing the early stage of the “very complex investigation.”

The 5-year-old boy’s cause of death remained under investigation Wednesday, sheriff’s officials said.

“It is with great sadness that I want to share with you that one of our kindergarten students has died unexpectedly,” wrote in the email to parents. “There is currently an active police investigation and law enforcement asked the district not to release the student¶¶Ňőap name. We ask the community to honor the family’s privacy at this time.”

The sheriff’s office said Wednesday that there was no ongoing danger to the community and that everyone involved in the boy’s death has been identified.

Children as young as 10 can be criminally prosecuted in Colorado. Typically, hundreds of Colorado children between the ages of 10 and 12 face criminal charges each year.

State lawmakers have on multiple occasions introduced bills aimed at raising the minimum age for prosecution to 13, but those bills have failed. Both of the recent efforts — in 2022 and 2023 — included exceptions that would have allowed children as young as 10 to still be prosecuted for homicide. Children younger than 12 cannot be charged as adults and their cases must proceed in juvenile court.

Timberline Elementary plans to offer students and staff support through its mental health team and in the coming days, Bowens wrote.

“There is no right or wrong way to cope with loss, but there are some things that adults can do to help students work through this difficult time,” Bowens wrote. “I want to remind you how important it is to have conversations with your own child and remind them that if he or she is struggling with this loss to seek out the support of an adult.”

Bowens ended the email with a reminder to “Please hug your children — nothing is more important than our kids.”

South Metro Fire Rescue firefighters and Arapahoe County deputies responded to the explosion at Extended Stay America, 9604 E. Easter Ave., at about 2:30 p.m. Sunday, .

When deputies arrived, they saw a shattered window and smoke coming from a second-floor room, sheriff’s officials said. Deputies forced their way into the room and found it was unoccupied.

The fire was contained to one room, and the flames were under control less than 30 minutes later, . The hotel’s 93 occupants were evacuated and temporarily moved to a different hotel.

A dog and a cat were also safely rescued, according to the sheriff’s office.

Paramedics took one person to the hospital for further evaluation, but no other injuries were reported, .

The cause of the fire remained under investigation Sunday.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The nonprofit law firm, Towards Justice, sent to Sheriff Lou Vallario after months of allegations raised by Glenwood Springs-based advocacy group Voces Unidas. That group said Vallario had sidestepped state law to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in transferring immigrants into ICE custody.

The letter asks the Western Slope county’s sheriff to stop that practice, as well as any prohibited information-sharing with federal immigration authorities.

“Sheriff Valerio and other law enforcement across the state seeking to collaborate with ICE must know that they are not above the law,” Towards Justice executive director David Seligman said in a statement.

Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Shannon Stowe said in an email that she hadn’t yet seen Towards Justice’s letter. She pointed to a Feb. 7, 2025, statement from Vallario, in which he wrote that he works “with ALL law enforcement agencies, from local to international, to the degree I legally can.”

“As it is a legal matter, it will need to be reviewed by the County Attorney’s Office before any action is taken,” Stowe wrote.

Voces Unidas and Towards Justice accused a Garfield County deputy and an ICE agent of arresting an immigrant outside of a Walmart last June. The deputy then drove the man from Glenwood Springs to the town of De Beque, the organizations said, where he was turned over to ICE custody.

Alex Sánchez of Voces Unidas and Toree Lindblad of Towards Justice said the man had no federal or state criminal charges, and he was later deported from a detention center in Aurora.

The incident report, which is included in the letter, states that the ICE agent was part of a joint task force with the sheriff’s office. The deputy helped transport the man into the custody of “ERO,” or Enforcement and Removal Operations, which is the branch of ICE that handles civil immigration and deportations.

Five other deputies were present at the initial arrest, Towards Justice alleged.

Colorado law broadly prohibits local law enforcement from participating in civil immigration enforcement activities, and it also blocks any sharing of personal information with ICE outside of criminal probes.

Stowe did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Walmart arrest.

The letter from Towards Justice also accuses the sheriff’s office of allowing ICE agents into the local jail to pick up immigrants before they’re released. Sánchez said his group had documented nine cases of in-custody transfers, and Towards Justice released a statement from a woman who said she’d exited a jail bathroom after paying her bail, only to find a sheriff’s deputy waiting with an ICE agent.

But that practice may not violate state law. Colorado law prohibits jails from holding people at ICE’s request, or from holding them longer than necessary to allow ICE to come and pick them up.

However, it’s not illegal for ICE to arrest someone in a jail or for a jail to alert the agency that an immigrant is set to be released.

Last year, Colorado lawmakers briefly debated blocking ICE agents from entering nonpublic areas of jails. show Vallario criticizing that provision as dangerous and saying he would “not comply” with that part of the bill, if it were passed.

But the provision was later stripped from the bill.

Vallario told The Denver Post last year that he did not delay immigrants’ releases and that he was bound by state law. In his statement last year, Vallario wrote that people who are eligible for release must be set free from jail custody within six hours.

“However, local ICE agents review our public jail website that shows the status of everyone in jail,” he wrote. “If ICE has an interest in detaining one, or more of them because of the seriousness of their crimes, they notify the jail and ask that we let them know when that person of interest is going to be released, and we do.”

The emails obtained by Voces Unidas also show Vallario criticizing state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, a Glenwood Springs Democrat who sponsored last year’s bill proposing to further limit ICE cooperation by state and local officials.

In a June email to other law enforcement officials, Vallario sent a picture of Velasco carrying an anti-ICE sign, and he called her a “POS.”

Deputies conducting a welfare check at 8 a.m. on Jan. 29 in unincorporated Arapahoe County found the woman’s body, sheriff’s officials said in a . Her death is being investigated as a homicide.

Arapahoe County Coroner Kelly Lear identified the woman killed as 25-year-old Zacoria Maelan Moore. Moore died from a gunshot wound, according to the coroner’s office.

The sheriff’s office is not releasing the exact location where the woman was found because investigators are still looking for a suspect, spokesperson Ginger Delgado said.

Anyone with information about the case can contact the investigation tip line at 720-874-8477.

Updated 9:17 a.m. Feb. 5, 2026: This article was updated to include the identity of the woman who was killed.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is investigating, according to a statement issued Friday afternoon.

The cards were stamped with “ICE Denver field office” and the address and phone number for the immigration detention center in Aurora, said Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas, a Glenwood Springs-based immigrant-rights advocacy group. The cards were left in several cars abandoned after their occupants were arrested by ICE agents earlier this week in Eagle County, during what Sánchez described as fake traffic stops.

Sánchez said eight people were arrested in the traffic operation and that his group has confirmed that they’re detained in the Aurora facility. Avon Police Chief Greg Daly told that ICE had confirmed seven arrests and detentions carried out Wednesday morning near Eagle-Vail.

Sánchez said family members who came to retrieve the abandoned vehicles found the playing cards. Some of the cars, he said, were left running in the middle of a highway west of Vail, and their drivers had pulled over thinking ICE agents were local police conducting traffic stops.

He said Voces Unidas staff had also seen the cards and had spoken with family members who’d found them.

In a statement, an unnamed spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said ICE “unequivocally” condemned “this type of action and/or officer conduct.” After learning about the cards, supervisors quickly stepped in “to address the issue.”

“The ICE Office of Professional Responsibility will conduct a thorough investigation and will take appropriate and swift action,” the spokesperson wrote.

The cards are similar to those left by some American troops on the bodies of Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War, a “psychological warfare” practice described by to a congressman.

“It is a racist symbol, and it¶¶Ňőap just disgusting to see the actions of ICE in our community,” Sánchez said. “Leaving a racist death card behind for families to find is just sickening.”

Rumors of ICE activity in the Vail area on Wednesday prompted some businesses to shut down early and at least two restaurants to close for the day, the Vail Daily reported.

Denver immigration attorney Hans Meyer told The Denver Post that he had spent Friday consulting with the men arrested in the Eagle County traffic operation. He said he was “investigating the potential unlawfulness of ICE’s actions.”

State Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, a Glenwood Springs Democrat, said the cards were an “intimidation tactic.”

“It¶¶Ňőap disgusting that ICE is using these racist tactics to intimidate our communities,” she said.

Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly joined with 23rd Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler to argue that the state law unduly limits law enforcement officers’ discretion to block applications for , a visa set aside for non-citizen victims of crime who cooperate with law enforcement and meet other conditions.

Crime victims seeking U visas must have their — that is, local officials must state that the applicants were victims of qualifying crimes and that they are helping in the investigation or prosecution of those crimes.

Federal immigration officials make the final decisions on whether or not visa applications are granted. Under federal law, victims seeking U visas must show that they have suffered physical or mental abuse due to a qualifying crime that happened in the U.S., they possess information about that crime, and they have been helpful or will be helpful to the prosecution.

No more than 10,000 U visas can be issued in any given year nationwide.

In 2021, to require that state officials consider only a victim’s helpfulness and whether they were subject to a qualifying crime when deciding whether to certify a victim’s application for a U visa. The state law also requires that officials consider a victim to be helpful unless there is documentation that the victim refused to cooperate with the case.

The that local officials are not responsible for determining whether victims meet all of the qualifications for a U visa, and instead are only responsible for certifying the applications.

Brauchler and Weekly claim in the lawsuit — filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Denver — that the state law conflicts with federal law and violates their First Amendment rights.

“I don’t think the state has the authority to order me to sign federal documents attesting to certain facts,” Brauchler said.

Brauchler declined to certify a U visa application in June because the victim’s claim of domestic violence fell outside the statute of limitations and could not be prosecuted, according to the lawsuit. Under state law, he should have passed that application on to federal immigration authorities, he claimed, because there was no documentation that the victim had not cooperated with authorities.

“What the state has done is to interpret for me what cooperation means,” he said. “So instead of me being able to suggest, ‘You can’t be helpful for me because you waited too long to bring this crime forward,’ they say, ‘You don’t get to consider this, George. You have to consider them helpful.'”

Brauchler argued that the law strips him of the discretion allowed under federal law and regulations.

“It has converted this very scarce, very valuable resource for fighting crime into a golden ticket to stay in America if you suggest you are a victim of crime,” he said.

He acknowledged that a law enforcement certification does not mean a victim’s visa application will be approved by federal authorities, but said the state law forces him to certify applications for people whom he believes should not receive U visas.

“We now flood ICE with a whole bunch of applications for them to sift through and to try to figure out how to prioritize, instead of calling our shot and saying, ‘This application actually matters to us,'” he said. referring to .

Legislators also set deadlines in the 2021 law within which Colorado officials must act on certification requests and required agencies to report data on certifications and denials to the state.

Between 2019 and 2025, 55 Colorado law enforcement agencies and district attorneys’ offices reported receiving 1,368 requests for U-visa certifications, according to records kept by the . The agencies signed off on 1,118 of those requests — approving about 82%.

Local officials most frequently denied requests because the applicant was not a victim of a qualifying criminal activity, the records show, and also denied requests because victims did not demonstrate helpfulness with the prosecution or investigation.

Neither the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office nor the 23rd Judicial District has submitted data on their offices’ certifications and denials to the state, the records show.

The 23rd Judicial District, which includes Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties, was created in January 2025 and so could not have reported the prior year’s data, Brauchler noted. He said the office will meet this year’s March 1 deadline for doing so.

A spokeswoman with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the agency’s lack of data.

The four masked burglars broke into a maintenance shop and the Arapahoe County Events Center at the fairgrounds shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to a news release from the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.

They stole television screens, unspecified tools and two white Ford F250 pickup trucks with red Arapahoe County logos on the doors, sheriff’s officials said in the release.

The trucks — license plates AIP-025 and QTL-363 — were last seen near E. Sixth Avenue and Potomac Street in northwest Aurora, sheriff’s officials said.

If caught, the unidentified suspects will face charges of theft, burglary and criminal mischief, according to the sheriff’s office.

Anyone with information about the burglary or suspects is asked to contact the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office’s tip line at 720-874-8477. Tipsters can remain anonymous, sheriff’s officials said.