The Adams County Sheriff’s Office issued a missing persons alert after the teen was last seen near 87th Avenue and Galen Court at around 6 p.m. Tuesday.

She was found safe as of 2 p.m. Wednesday, the sheriff’s office said.

“Ex-CBI analyst Woods gets 10 years in prison,” September 9 news story

Exactly how incompetent does a state agency have to be to not discover deception and fraud in at least 1,045 cases over a 29-year period? The Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s management has some real explaining to do. Perhaps in this era of Citizens United, with corporations getting powers once vested only in individuals, like protected speech, we should seriously consider felony arrests of organizational leadership who hold office while that organization commits acts resulting in personal injury, like a wrongful arrest, or death. IMHO.

Dave Knutson, Arvada

Subsidize the ski industry while lift ticket prices rise

Re: “Alterra signs 12-year lease with city,” September 4, news story

It doesn’t surprise me that city and state leaders are touting an $11 million giveaway of incentives, allowing Alterra Mountain Co. to move its headquarters from RiNo to the former Denver Post office building.

Alterra, which has operated Denver-owned Winter Park resort since 2018 and offers the Ikon ski pass for multiple resorts, has had a notable record of raising prices for skiers. Prior to their Winter Park management control, online day tickets for adults were $69 in both 2017 and 2018. When they started their pricing spiral (the next year), the same online ticket price went to $144, although in 2020 they scaled back to $113, evidently after finding that their initial doubling of price met resistance.

Their Ikon passes have also had regular price increases greatly exceeding inflation (this year at 9% over 2025 price). They are not alone in the trend. Vail Resorts, which has raised their advance purchase Epic Pass almost 40% over the past five years, finds itself in a shareholder lawsuit — reported in the same day’s Post article — alleging anticompetitive collusion with “other destination resort companies” in a scheme to drive up day ski prices. And that filing is the third such lawsuit.

These are all disturbing — especially the taxpayer subsidy — given the amounts of other taxpayer investments we have made in support of the ski industry in road and infrastructure budgets, as well as tourist development dollars.

Peter Ehrlich, Denver

Re: “The Alterra deal will help a struggling downtown,” September 6, opinion column

I don’t think he was armed, the guy who threatened to kill me Sunday morning at 16th and Larimer. A beautiful sunny Sunday, save for the oratory of screaming mental cases, and the transients, either passed out on the sidewalk or harassing the brunch crowd on the porch of the Thompson Hotel. Security is thin and scattered downtown, and that morning was no different. So, in reading Sunday’s Denver Post editorial on Alterra’s impending relocation to downtown, I couldn’t help but approach it from the perspective of a Colorado native who lives in lower downtown and has walked its streets for fifteen years.

I applaud all efforts to revitalize central Denver’s economy and to meet the formidable post-pandemic challenges that still linger. But most of my friends avoid the city. The exasperated business owners I know wonder why they have to provide all of their own security. While my European friends who visit appreciate the colorful photo opportunities presented by officers on horseback, we downtowners see no evidence of the armed beat cops that the Denver Police say they’ve added. None.

Denver is not a great city. I hope that we’ll someday have civic leadership that better understands that the vitality of a city’s core hinges not just on its corporate anchors, but also on the image that it projects and the safety of its streets. Wishful thinking, I suspect.

Scott Newell, Denver

Israel isn’t the only one using AI for attacks

RE: “How do I have ‘the AI talk’ in my classroom?” September 6, opinion column

I was enjoying the article reprinted from the Chicago Tribune and written by a high school English teacher deliberating how best to talk with his students regarding the use of AI.

That is, until I reached the second-to-last paragraph, which blew me away.  Why does this teacher decide it¶¶Òőap ok to slur Israel in the newspaper when he admits it isn’t ok to do the same within his school?

Out of a billion examples of how AI is being used, why does teacher Miller elect to point out that only Israel uses AI to identify targets? An educated teacher should be able to use AI like I did to learn that the militaries of the United States, China, Russia, Ukraine, and some European countries are also developing or using AI for similar targeting purposes. An educated teacher should know that Israel uses AI to identify targets that are Hamas operatives. Those Hamas operatives hide among their families and other civilians. Israel attempts to warn when there is a need to evacuate. It is indeed tragic when innocent family members are collateral damage. Unfortunately, this is a war being fought in a residential rather than a combat setting, because Hamas chooses to embed within the Gazan population.

Shame on both The Denver Post and The Chicago Tribune for either not recognizing or not editing out this derogatory paragraph.

Terri Tilliss, Greenwood Village

Keep income tax rate the same for everyone

Re: “State income tax rewrite makes ballot,” September 2, news story

The recent certification of Initiative 195, which seeks to replace Colorado’s flat income tax with a graduated system, is a mistake. As a blue-collar worker, I believe our current 4.4% flat tax is already fair for everyone.

In my mind, the math is simple. Currently, a person earning $100,000 pays $4,400 in state income tax, while someone who reaches a $1 million income pays $44,000. The wealthier person is already paying significantly more dollars into the system. The percentage does not need to change. We should not penalize people who had the drive and wherewithal to work hard and achieve financial success. Becoming a millionaire is a reward for hard work, not a crime to be punished.

I believe raising these rates will backfire economically. High-income earners, remote workers and mobile businesses will simply leave Colorado for more tax-friendly states. If we run the wealthy away, there will be no one left to pay the tax, and the burden will ultimately fall back onto blue-collar people like me.

Instead of always trying to find more money to spend, let’s figure out where the money we already pay in is going. I don’t think Colorado has an income problem. Colorado has a spending problem.

Colorado voters should leave our tax structure alone this November. Do not penalize success. Vote “no” on Initiative 195.

Rich Linnebur, Westminster

The dangers of subterfuge and voting early

Re: “Information empowers voters so why would we strip knowledge from the ballot,” September 6, opinion

Regarding Krista Kafer’s essay on simplification of ballots, and our legislators’ incessant tampering with, and even altering, their language with prospects of fiscal gloom-and-doom, shouldn’t their language be as simple as possible (i.e. the famous Navy message: “Sighted Ship, Sank Same!”), to avoid potential subterfuge?

How many long-time area voters remember in 1999 a certain large metro-area school board offered its constituents a ‘one-time-good-deal’ of a 5-year tax increase to improve student achievements? How many remember that it included a ‘money-back guarantee’ if its goals were not realized, which, ultimately, they were not? How many remember that the board then crafted the required money return ballot measure with a choice of two reasonable-sounding options? How many early voters belatedly realized that it took us two weeks of research to determine that neither option returned any money to the affected taxpayers, but redirected the money to one or the other of two district accounts?

Shouldn’t correspondent Robert Johnson of Denver, who wrote on a different, but voting-related topic in Sunday’s ‘Perspective’, be aware of the danger of voting too early?

Russell W. Haas, Golden

Steinem helped women take office

In all the tributes to Gloria Steinem, I’m surprised no one has mentioned her role in getting women elected to public office. Soon after she started Ms. Magazine, she helped Pat Schroeder become Colorado’s first Congresswoman in 1972. Steinem paid her own way to Denver to encourage folks to vote for Pat.  After one such event attended by some 500 people, a few of us took her out for dinner.  It was amusing to see our husbands, including my own, jostle one another to sit next to Gloria.

Cyndi Kahn, Denver

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“At its core, this case is about trust — the extraordinary trust placed in Ms. Woods, and her breach of that trust,” District Judge Andrew Poland said as he imposed the sentence.

Woods mishandled at least 1,045 criminal cases during her 29-year career as a DNA analyst at the CBI. She deleted, omitted and manipulated data to speed up the DNA testing process and boost her productivity, creating unreliable results in hundreds of criminal cases.

“I know an apology cannot undo the harm or restore the trust that was lost,” Woods said during Tuesday’s sentencing in Jefferson County District Court. “For many years I was entrusted with evidence that could have profound consequences for defendants, victims, families and the courts. I failed that responsibility. I am deeply sorry for that failure.”

Woods could have faced between eight and 16 years in prison under the terms of her plea agreement. The 66-year-old former analyst pleaded guilty to four felonies in June, admitting to committing a cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public servant and forgery. About 100 other counts against her were dismissed as part of the agreement.

Woods’ defense attorney, Tom Ward, sought the minimum eight-year prison sentence, arguing that she took responsibility for her crimes and cooperated with investigators. He said Woods’ misconduct was clustered in a few years later in her career during which her caseload had doubled.

“The things she did in this case are serious and they merit punishment,” he said, “…but they do not erase all of the good things she did.”

Chief Deputy District Attorney Darren Kafka asked the judge to impose a sentence that would start to restore trust in Colorado’s criminal justice system by strongly condemning Woods’ crimes.

“Can we trust our criminal justice system?” he asked. “Or even to some, can we trust science? Sowing this doubt will be Ms. Woods’ legacy.”

In dozens of sexual assault cases, Woods falsely said she found no male DNA in her testing when she had in fact found male DNA, depriving investigators of information key to their cases and ultimately denying justice to victims, Kafka said.

Kafka outlined 10 individual cases in which Woods lied about her DNA findings, including in the alleged sexual assault of a 4-year-old Pueblo girl, a woman who claimed she was raped in Rocky Mountain National Park, and an 88-year-old Denver woman who said she was sexually assaulted. In each case, Woods found male DNA but said she did not, and then covered her tracks by authoring false lab reports and making false changes to data, Kafka said.

“All of this created a mire of uncertainty and confusion that CBI and the state of Colorado as a whole will struggle to untangle, I suspect, for long after Ms. Woods’ sentence is discharged,” he said.

Ward said Woods discarded findings in cases that she believed “were going nowhere,” in an attempt to speed up CBI’s ability to test cases as the agency worked through backlogged sexual assault kit testing.

“It wasn’t her call to make, and she made it anyway, and that is why she is being sentenced today,” Ward said.

Woods struggled to speak at times during her emotional statement in court. She hugged tearful supporters before she was handcuffed and taken into custody at the conclusion of the hearing.

“There are cases where a sample could have gone forward for additional testing and did not because of a choice I made,” Woods said. “A suspect may have gone unidentified because of me.”

The CBI’s investigation into Woods found she altered data from an evidence item in 156 cases, altered quality control samples in 520 instances, failed to document her work in 233 cases, failed to follow policy in 106 cases, and reported results that conflicted with her notes in 30 cases, Ward said.

He noted that one act by Woods often impacted multiple cases, and said the CBI found she acted intentionally to change data 227 times.

Poland said Tuesday that Woods’ crimes were “intentional misconduct by a highly trained professional occupying a position of extraordinary trust,” and that her crimes undermined the integrity of the judicial system.

“When that integrity is compromised, the damage reaches beyond any single case, it affects confidence in the system itself,” the judge said.

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King said after the hearing Tuesday that law enforcement and victims trusted Woods to handle evidence honestly.

“Instead, Ms. Woods played God,” she said. “She substituted her own judgment for the evidence.”

CBI Director Armando Saldate on Tuesday called Woods’ sentencing “another step forward” amid the CBI’s attempts to rectify her misconduct, reform policies and procedures, and shift the culture of the agency’s forensic services away from a quantity-over-quality mindset. He said Woods’ actions do not define the CBI.

James Karbach, a spokesman for the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, called for the CBI to submit to independent oversight.

“Even after all that has transpired, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has still not sufficiently addressed the pervasive systemic and structural issues that this scandal has exposed,” he said. “CBI has continued to downplay the impact of its decades-long fraud, avoid full transparency and accountability, and has demonstrated that it is not capable of regulating itself.”

The CBI’s internal investigation found that Woods took advantage of the state lab’s focus on results and productivity — as well as professional trust between colleagues — to hide her widespread manipulation of DNA data for years.

Several of Woods’ colleagues raised repeated ethical concerns about her work years before the scandal broke open — in 2014 and again in 2018 — but the CBI failed to stop her misconduct until an intern discovered a pattern of missing DNA data in Woods’ work in 2023, a failure of oversight that a Colorado judge in August found to be “outrageous government conduct.”

Woods resigned from the CBI in 2023 instead of being fired, and the agency spent 2024 sorting through her flawed work. Lawmakers passed a new law in 2025 that put additional guardrails on forensic testing in Colorado and opened up a specific legal path for people impacted by flawed testing to seek post-conviction relief in court.

Woods’ misconduct led to at least one overturned murder conviction — in the 1994 killing of Marty Grisham in Boulder — and has raised questions about the validity of hundreds of other convictions, with many post-conviction challenges underway in courts across the state.

Trussell was after leaving her campus dorm, Hallett Hall, the night of Feb. 9, 2025. Rangers found her body in hard-to-reach terrain near the Elephant Buttress trailhead in Boulder Canyon the morning of Feb. 15.

The Boulder County coroner’s office ruled her death a suicide as result of the toxic effects of amphetamines and hypothermia.

Trussell’s family and petitioned the state attorney general’s office for an outside investigation. The CBI started looking into Trussell’s case in January after her parents, Joe Trussell and Vanessa Diaz, requested the review under a 2022 law that requires the state to review certain types of cases involving Indigenous people.

“No administrative review can undo the profound loss experienced by the Trussell family or answer every remaining question,” CBI Director Armando Saldate III said in a statement.

The review process ensures every piece of evidence was looked at “with the utmost seriousness, rigor and respect,” Saldate added.

“We offer these findings with deep compassion for Megan’s grieving loved ones and a commitment to continuous improvement in law enforcement practices,” he said.

CBI did not release a copy of the state-level review Friday but said it included looking at the entire investigative record, including digital evidence, cellular analysis, campus access records, body-camera video, search records and forensic files.

The review team presented the case to the agency’s cold case review team July 21, which included about 40 prosecutors, investigators, toxicologists, analysts, victims advocates and forensic pathologists and scientists.

“Based on the totality of the record, and with input from Cold Case Review Team experts, the CBI concluded that the original response and investigation by the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office and partner agencies were reasonable, substantial and supported by the available evidence,” state officials said Friday.

According to the CBI, the review showed there was no evidence to support Megan Trussell’s death was a homicide or that she was physically assaulted or that an uncompleted step in the investigation would have changed the finding that her death was a suicide.

Medical experts “strongly supported” the coroner’s finding that her death was caused by elevated amphetamine levels and severe cold exposure. The review also found the initial search response after she was reported missing was extensive and appropriately expanded despite severe terrain and adverse weather that hurt visibility and made it more difficult for dog teams and drones to search Boulder Canyon.

In a statement released through a spokesperson, Megan Trussell’s family said CBI officials appeared disorganized and unprepared while meeting with the family on Friday and gave answers that “were often contradictory and patronizing in nature.”

“CBI did not know basic facts about the case until today, including that the family was the source of locating Megan’s phone and key video evidence,” the family said in a statement. “Today did not bring closure. It reinforced why we are still fighting for real, complete answers about what happened to our daughter.”

Megan Trussell’s family is still trying to obtain a complete autopsy report and photographs, the statement said.

“We deserve the opportunity to have that evidence reviewed by an independent expert with no connection to the agencies that have already reached conclusions in Megan’s case.”

Dustin Dwayne Martin, a 37-year-old officer with the Springfield Police Department, is accused of using social media to solicit sexual activity from someone he believed to be a minor, according to a news release from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

That “minor” was actually a fake Snapchat account run by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office’s Sex Crimes Unit, which Florida law enforcement used to identify people trying to solicit children online, Colorado investigators said.

Martin faces one charge of internet luring of a child, a felony, and has been placed on unpaid administrative leave pending the investigation, CBI officials said.

As of Thursday, Martin was still listed as a certified officer in the . His next court date had not yet been scheduled.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The girl was found safe as of Thursday evening after she was reporting missing from the 3100 block of Hooker Street on Aug. 20, the CBI said.

A trooper tried to pull over a blue Subaru Impreza about 7:15 a.m. near U.S. 24 and Piney Point Lane outside of Woodland Park, about 17 miles northwest of Colorado Springs, the State Patrol said.

The driver started firing at the trooper, who was hit multiple times, State Patrol chief Col. Matthew Packard said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

The man fled the scene, and the wounded trooper said over the radio that he had been shot. As a second trooper who was nearby drove toward the shooting, the man passed him while heading in the opposite direction and opened fire, hitting the second trooper, Packard said.

Both troopers were able to drive themselves to UCHealth Pikes Peak Regional Hospital, which is just across the highway, and walk into the emergency room, Packard said.

Trooper Clark Tinan, who sustained minor injuries, was treated and discharged, according to the State Patrol. He has been with the agency for 15 years. Trooper Skylar Hoehn, who has been with the patrol for 10 years, remained hospitalized Wednesday with serious injuries, according to the agency.

Both are expected to survive.

The shooting sparked a massive law enforcement response as the Teller County Sheriff’s Office sent out a reverse 911 call to lock down the Westwood Lakes and Woodland West neighborhoods and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation issued a Blue Alert for the vehicle and driver.

At 9:24 a.m., the family member of a resident in one of the locked-down subdivisions called 911 and said a man doing general contract work at their home matched the description of the suspected shooter, Sheriff Jason Mikesell said.

Deputies already searching the area arrived at the home within one minute, and the man opened fire on responding officers in what Mikesell described as an ambush. One deputy returned fire, hitting the man multiple times.

Law enforcement provided medical aid, but the man was pronounced dead at the hospital at noon. His name will be released after his relatives are notified.

“I will tell you this: If you shoot a Colorado state trooper, the world is coming for you. And that¶¶Òőap what happened today. And I’m grateful for that response today,” Packard said.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is examining why the man was pulled over for a traffic stop, 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said. The CBI is the lead investigative agency for the shooting that injured troopers and the police shooting that killed the suspect.

In a statement, Gov. Jared Polis said he was devastated to learn about the shooting.

“As both troopers receive medical care for their injuries, I and the entire state of Colorado are keeping both of them and their families in our thoughts and prayers and wishing them a speedy and full recovery,” he said.

Gage Vidal Montoya, 37, is charged with eight counts of child sexual exploitation related to possessing and intending to distribute sexual abuse material based on tips submitted to law enforcement in 2022, 2023 and 2025.

The CBI started investigating the case in September after the Las Animas County Sheriff’s Office requested help with a tip from the , investigators wrote in the complaint.

The initial tip included five videos sent between two users on the messaging app Kik, including one with the since-deleted username “Donttellthewife1654” that investigators linked to Montoya. The videos showed what appeared to be child sexual abuse, including bestiality, investigators wrote.

Task force investigators then linked the 2025 videos to two other tips about child sexual abuse material stored in the Verizon Wireless cloud from December 2022 and February 2023, which included screenshots of explicit images from Snapchat. The Verizon account connected to the images was registered to Montoya, who lives in Trinidad.

Police found photos of Montoya among the images of child sexual abuse and other explicit photos. An investigator also found chats in which the Kik username linked to Montoya posed as a girl younger than 18 and discussed selling videos for payment by Cash App. In one chat, “Donttellthewife1654” had a sexually explicit conversation with another user who claimed to be a 15-year-old girl, according to the affidavit.

Montoya was put on administrative leave from the Colorado Department of Corrections after his arrest, which the CBI announced Aug. 13.

He also ran for Las Animas County sheriff in 2025, according to the affidavit and state candidate records.

Montoya is in custody on a $45,000 bail and is set to appear in court Sept. 2.

Gilpin County and Black Hawk police and fire crews responded to a hotel room at the , 111 Richman St., at 7 a.m. Saturday for an “incident involving an infant,” the Black Hawk Police Department said in a news release Tuesday.

First responders started providing aid and took the baby to the hospital, where they were pronounced dead.

Black Hawk police requested help from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and are working with the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office to investigate the death, which department officials said was common practice in these types of cases.

Additional information about the investigation was not immediately available.

This is a developing story.

Judge Vincente Vigil dismissed a felony child sex-assault case after finding the CBI’s inaction, even after multiple coworkers raised concerns about the quality of Woods’ work, rose to the level of outrageous government conduct, that is, “conduct that violates fundamental fairness and is shocking to the universal sense of justice,” he wrote in an Aug. 2 order.

It’s extremely rare for Colorado courts to find that official misconduct meets the legal standard of outrageous government conduct; the threshold for such a finding is “exceedingly high,” the judge noted.

“The management at CBI at best fostered a workplace culture where case processing numbers were prioritized over rigorous technical oversight, and at worst actively sought to shield Ms. Woods, a favored employee, from having her deficient work product come to light,” Vigil wrote.

The Weld County District Attorney’s Office appealed the judge’s ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court on Monday. The filing was suppressed and was not available Tuesday.

“The fact of the matter is that Ms. Woods chose to become a cancer within the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and that agency chose first to ignore, then place a bandage on the tumor until it could no longer be hidden from public view,” the judge wrote in the scathing six-page order. “When the integrity of our justice system is (compromised) as it was here, if we as the judiciary do not condemn such intolerable acts, we make a choice to tolerate them.”

Woods mishandled DNA testing in at least 1,045 criminal cases during her 29-year career at the statewide criminal justice agency, an internal investigation found. She deleted, omitted and manipulated data to speed up the testing process and boost her productivity, creating unreliable DNA testing results in hundreds of criminal cases and sending shockwaves through Colorado’s criminal courts.

The 65-year-old former scientist in June pleaded guilty to four felonies related to the data manipulation. She will be sentenced to between eight and 16 years in prison on Sept. 8.

Several of Woods’ colleagues raised repeated ethical concerns about her work years before the scandal broke open — in 2014 and again in 2018 — but the CBI failed to stop her misconduct until an intern discovered a pattern of missing DNA data in Woods’ work in 2023. That discovery prompted the first serious inquiry into Woods’ misconduct on the job, leading authorities to uncover the full scope of her crimes.

Rob Low, a spokesman for CBI, said in a statement Tuesday that the bureau is monitoring the case.

“We have tremendous respect for the courts and the judicial process and will watch the appellate review of this case,” he said. “We stand firmly behind the integrity of our Forensic Lab.”

Vigil found that the CBI had “little taste for oversight” and described the agency’s inaction as “incomprehensible.” Woods’ conduct “left a dark mark on the history of Colorado justice,” he wrote in the order.

“The Woods scandal is not merely about one case, but the conduct of the government over a shockingly wide field,” the judge wrote. “If the scope and breadth of the Woods’ scandal does not constitute outrageous government conduct, this Court would struggle to imagine something that would. If this is not outrageous government conduct, then that doctrine may as well not exist.”

Vigil dismissed a charge of sex assault on a child against 31-year-old Daniel Eatinger filed in connection with a 2018 incident in Greeley in which a girl said a stranger broke into her bedroom while she was sleeping, sexually assaulted her and then left through a window.

DNA testing conducted by Woods found Eatinger’s DNA in a bite mark on the girl’s body, according to an affidavit and the judge’s order.

The order did not detail whether Eatinger’s case was one of the thousand that Woods mishandled, but suggested it does not matter — a judge can make findings of outrageous government conduct for actions that impact the integrity of the judicial system, not just for actions that impact a particular defendant, Vigil wrote.

Eatinger, a registered sex offender, was previously convicted of a sexual battery charge in Florida in connection with an between the ages of 12 and 16, according to Florida court records.

Vigil noted in his order that he is aware of only one instance in state history in which an appellate court upheld a finding of outrageous government conduct, and that was in 1988, when La Plata County law enforcement created a fake criminal case against a fake defendant, charged the fake defendant with fabricated crimes and presented the case as real to a judge so that the fake defendant — an undercover officer — could hire a particular defense attorney and investigate the attorney for drug use.

In that instance, the judge wrote, the integrity of one case was compromised.

“Here, the integrity of one thousand cases in presumably multiple courts has been compromised,” he wrote. “The integrity of the role of forensic evidence in our criminal justice system has been compromised. The manipulation of data in a thousand cases can be described no other way than violating principles of fundamental fairness, that forensic testing is reliable and will guide us to the truth because it has no opinion and cannot lie. Ms. Woods has taught us a hard lesson, that the integrity of a test relies on the integrity of a person.”