, 42, was arrested on suspicion of 10 misdemeanors after an investigation showed he muted his body-worn camera, including while interacting with a woman who accused him of sexual misconduct. He is also accused of using police databases to search for information connected to a woman he was having an affair with, according to the affidavit.

Gearhart resigned from the Lakewood Police Department on Sept. 15 while on administrative leave. Lakewood’s internal affairs unit was investigating allegations that he propositioned an intoxicated woman after he arrested her on July 8 and was transporting her to a detox facility in his patrol car.

The allegations came to light after Lakewood police, including Gearhart, responded to a 911 call involving the same woman on July 24, and the woman recognized Gearhart and told other officers he tried to have sex with her, the affidavit stated.

Lakewood investigators found Gearhart muted his body-worn camera while transporting the woman to the detox facility during the July 8 call, and kept it muted as he sat in the parking lot for 25 minutes with the woman in the back seat, according to the affidavit.

Lakewood police turned the case over to the DA’s office when they found evidence of possible criminal behavior, the department said Tuesday.

After leaving the Lakewood Police Department, Gearhart worked as a non-sworn detention deputy at the , also known as the , which is operated by The Geo Group.

In a Tuesday email, an unnamed U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Gearhart “is not a DHS employee. He is a contracted employee at the GEO detention center.”

“We can confirm that Mr. Gearhart is no longer employed at GEO’s Aurora ICE Processing Center in any capacity,” spokesperson Christopher Ferreira said Thursday morning. Ferreira did not specify when Gearhart stopped working at the facility or whether he was fired.

Gearhart is not facing criminal charges for the sexual misconduct alleged in the affidavit because of “the passage of time, the evidence available and applicable law,” officials with the DA’s office wrote.

Gearhart slept with “too many, one too many” women while on duty, he told investigators, including women he arrested, pulled over for traffic stops or who were witnesses. He carried out the affairs in his patrol car, at a motel or at their homes while he was on duty.

“(The investigator) asked Agent Gearhart if he was on duty and essentially getting paid to have sex,” the affidavit stated. “Agent Gearhart affirmed but stated, ‘She wasn’t a victim.'”

Gearhart faces six official misconduct and four cybercrime charges for intentionally muting and deleting video from his body-worn camera and searching state and national crime databases for information about one of the women he was sleeping with, as well as information about her ex-husband and family members, according to court records.

He is also accused of muting and deleting body-worn camera footage after he arrested a woman for drunken driving on Aug. 1, 2023. The woman told investigators Gearhart flirted with her and let her use her vape and slip her handcuffs to the front while he was taking her to the hospital for a breathalyzer test.

In a statement Tuesday, Lakewood Police Chief Philip Smith said the department is taking the allegations with “profound urgency.”

“The badge represents a sacred bond between this organization and the citizens of Lakewood. To see that bond violated is not just a breach of policy; it is a betrayal of everything we stand for,” Smith said. “Abhorrent behavior has never been tolerated, and it will never be tolerated, in the Lakewood Police Department.”

Gearhart was arrested Tuesday and released from the Arapahoe County Jail on personal recognizance.

Updated 9:57 a.m. May 21, 2026: This article was updated to include a comment from GEO Group spokesperson Christopher Ferreira.

Jolene Dorothea Mathiesen, 45, was found unresponsive in her bunk at the jail in Golden shortly after 4:15 a.m. Wednesday, according to a .

Deputies and medical staff at the jail started CPR and administered Narcan, but she was declared dead at 4:56 a.m., the release stated.

Mathiesen was arrested Monday by the Lakewood Police Department on suspicion of a parole violation related to child abuse charges, sheriff’s officials said.

The First Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team is investigating the incident, and the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office will determine the woman’s cause of death, according to the sheriff’s office.

The bronze Works Progress Administration marker was installed near the intersection of West Alameda Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard to commemorate the 5,000 workers who extended Alameda Parkway to Red Rocks Amphitheatre during the Great Depression, according to Alameda Connects, a nonprofit organization focused on supporting the corridor.

The nonprofit’s executive director, Tom Quinn, noticed the plaque was missing from its red sandstone base and reported the apparent theft to Lakewood police on April 10. A theft investigation is underway, police spokesman John Romero said.

The bronze plaque is likely worth less than $50 as scrap metal, said Morgan Smith, a buyer at Rocky Mountain Recycling. It holds significantly more value as a historic artifact, Quinn said in a news release.

“This marker was intended as a permanent record of the New Deal legacy Franklin Roosevelt built and what social programs and public investment can achieve,” he said. “It is a somber reflection that trends indicate it was stripped for scrap by those for whom social safety nets were established to prevent this kind of desperate act.”

Brass is selling at slightly more than $3 a pound right now, Smith said, which is about the regular range, although perhaps slightly elevated because of its copper content, which is selling higher.

“So they’re doing thousands of dollars of damage to collect a few bucks,” Smith said of the potential thief.

He noted that if someone brought in the stolen historical marker or any other suspicious object to Rocky Mountain Recycling, the company would alert police, buy the item and collect the seller’s personal information.

“And usually, 99% of the time (the police) get here before the guy leaves,” he said.

James Agnew, 56, pleaded guilty to tampering with a deceased human body and identity theft, both felonies, in Jefferson County District Court, according to court records.

Prosecutors dismissed five felony charges of abuse of a corpse, theft, attempted theft, identity theft and unauthorized use of a financial device as part of the plea deal.

Agnew and his wife, Suzanne Agnew, were arrested in July after the brother of 64-year-old James Frances O’Neill called for a welfare check for their apartment in the 3400 block of South Ammon Street.

Investigators found O’Neill’s body had been under a deflated air mattress in the apartment since December 2023 and the Agnews had kept it there and not reported the death in part to spend O’Neill’s money. Police said the couple spent more than $17,000 on O’Neill’s debit card and someone forged his signature on a car title after his death.

A spokesperson with the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the sentencing because Suzanne Agnew’s case is ongoing. The 58-year-old pleaded not guilty in the case on Monday and is set to appear in court on May 26.

The girl was reported missing from the 2500 block of South Sheridan Boulevard, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said in a Missing Indigenous Person Alert on Wednesday.

She was found safe as of Thursday evening, CBI officials said.

Police accuse Robert Charles Watters, 64, of having an inappropriate relationship with a 10-year-old student. He is being held at the Jefferson County jail, the police department said Friday.

Watters has worked as a bus driver for Jeffco Public Schools, the state’s second largest-district, since 2018. He has driven Hutchinson Elementary students on the C-31 bus route since August 2023 and before that he drove the school’s C-49 route between 2021-23.

Jeffco Public Schools placed Watters on administrative leave on March 4, which prohibits the bus driver from contacting students, staff and families, the district said in a letter sent to Hutchinson families on Thursday. “We have begun the termination process, which requires certain steps under our collective bargaining agreement,” district officials said in the letter.

The district’s Title IX team is also working with Lakewood police to support the student and Hutchinson’s mental health staff are also on hand for pupils who need support, Jeffco Public School officials said in the letter.

“It is critical that we identify victims so that we can provide the appropriate resources and supports,” the letter read.

Lakewood Police ask that anyone with information about Watters, including whether they have been a victim, to contact the department’s tip line at 303-763-6800.

Mumma, 44, is charged with tampering with a deceased human body and tampering with evidence in connection with the death of Gratton, a 34-year-old transgender woman from Denver who disappeared in April and was found dead in a Lakewood alley in June.

Lakewood police were heavily criticized for their handling of the investigation into Gratton’s death, including for using her deadname and for an overall lack of transparency about the investigation. That criticism helped spur a push in Lakewood to create an independent civilian oversight board for the city’s police department.

Police considered Gratton’s death to be suspicious, but the coroner ruled the cause and manner of her death to be undetermined.

“The allegations in this indictment follow a months-long, collaborative investigation by the Lakewood Police Department and the Denver Police Department,”  District Attorney Alexis King said in a statement. “I want to commend the Lakewood agents whose persistence made this indictment possible, and I thank the victim’s loved ones and the community for their patience as we pursue justice. From the outset, law enforcement and prosecutors have treated this matter with the utmost seriousness, and we remain committed to prosecuting those named to the full extent of the law.”

The two-count indictment, issued Monday, alleges Mumma removed Gratton’s body, personal belongings and other evidence of her death from his office on West Colfax Avenue in Lakewood on April 16 “to avoid detection by police,” according to the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

Gratton and Mumma were in a “consensual intimate relationship,” according to prosecutors.

The indictment alleges the two entered Mumma’s office at 9655 W. Colfax Ave. at 10:41 p.m. April 15. Mumma told police Gratton had taken too much of the sedative gamma-hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, and passed out while lying on a futon, according to the indictment.

An unnamed male friend arrived at 12:45 a.m. as Gratton slept, snoring loudly and “making gurgling noises,” according to the indictment. Mumma told police that, at one point, Gratton vomited, and he and the friend rolled her onto her side.

Mumma and the unidentified friend left at 1:43 a.m., leaving Gratton “alone and asleep under the influence of drugs,” according to prosecutors.

Mumma later acknowledged to police that “he should have called 911 when Jax was vomiting because she could have been overdosing,” according to the indictment.

Nobody came or left the office unit until Mumma returned at 5:55 a.m., based on security camera footage, according to prosecutors.

Gratton’s last active session on her phone was in the early morning hours of April 16 and it used an IP address associated with that Lakewood address, according to prosecutors.

Mumma told investigators that when he returned to his office that morning in April, Gratton was gone. He said she had left personal items, including her shoes and a bag, that he placed in his car “to return to her at a later time,” according to the indictment.

But when he left again at 6:57 a.m., he moved his vehicle to the north side of the building, according to surveillance video footage reviewed by police. He went back in, the indictment alleges, and came out with trash bags that he threw into a dumpster before leaving the area.

“He is not observed placing Jax’s personal items into his vehicle,” the indictment states.

Nearly two months later, on June 6, Gratton’s body was discovered in a narrow, 4-foot-wide space between the buildings at 9655 and 9699 W. Colfax Ave. that is locked and inaccessible to the general public, prosecutors said.

She was found without shoes but wearing the same clothes she had on when she left her Denver apartment on April 15, according to prosecutors.

A grate from an air conditioning unit was on top of her lower body. The indictment alleges there was “a significant dent” on top of the air conditioning unit directly below the second-story window of Mumma’s office.

Her body was found directly beneath a window on the north side of Mumma’s office that had a bent and “partially askew” screen, according to the indictment.

In a June 20 interview with Lakewood police, “Mumma was confronted with the possibility of throwing a body out of his office window,” according to the indictment.

Mumma told investigators that he and Gratton had talked about crawling out of his office window and leaping to the roof next door to smoke, and theorized she “may have tried to do so and fell,” according to the indictment.

Police found no cigarettes or lighters on or near Gratton’s body, and her roommate told investigators that he did not know Gratton to smoke cigarettes, according to the court document.

By the time police searched Mumma’s office on May 29, the futon that had been there in April was gone, and none of Gratton’s personal belongings, including her cellphone, were found, according to prosecutors.

The unidentified second man who was with Gratton and Mumma early on April 16 was cooperative with police and “is not believed to have participated in the destruction or removal of any evidence associated with Gratton,” according to prosecutors.

Mumma was arrested in Summit County on Wednesday. He was transferred to the Jefferson County jail later in the evening and is being held on $100,000 cash bail. He is expected to appear in court Friday.

Manelson Leonel Ramirez, 27, was sentenced in December to 39 years in prison for second-degree murder in the January 2025 shooting death of 26-year-old Nairelis Castel-Orozco, court records show. Ramirez’s girlfriend, Flor Maria Contreras-Mujica, 26, was sentenced to seven years in prison for second-degree assault and criminally negligent homicide, both felonies, for her role in Castel-Orozco’s death, according to court records.

Lakewood officers responded to reports of a shooting in the 1400 block of Kendall Street at about 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 14, 2025, police said.

When officers arrived, they found a woman lying on her side with a pool of blood near her head, according to Ramirez’s arrest affidavit. Officers rolled the woman, Castel-Orozco, onto her back and discovered she was actively bleeding from her face and neck.

Paramedics took Castel-Orozco to the hospital, where she later died from a gunshot wound to her throat, according to the affidavit.

Contreras-Mujica told investigators that she was married to the victim and that they lived together. The two had been together for roughly 11 years, but Contreras-Mujica was “constantly cheating on” Castel-Orozco, the victim’s sister told police in the affidavit.

Castel-Orozco told her sister that Contreras-Mujica wanted to end the relationship in December 2024, the month before her fatal shooting, the affidavit stated. Contreras-Mujica started openly dating Ramirez at that time.

The victim also told her sister on the morning of the shooting that Contreras-Mujica had threatened to send someone to their apartment to kill Castel-Orozco, according to the affidavit.

Contreras-Mujica originally told police that she and Castel-Orozco had gone outside to take out the trash when a man with a face covering approached them and shot Castel-Orozco, the affidavit stated.

But another woman living in the apartment contradicted her story, telling investigators that Contreras-Mujica and Castel-Orozco had fought about Contreras-Mujica’s relationship with Ramirez on the morning of the shooting, police said in the affidavit. Contreras-Mujica attempted to set Castel-Orozco’s clothes on fire and accidentally burned the mattress in their shared bedroom. She also threatened Castel-Orozco with a lighter.

When Ramirez arrived at the apartment, Contreras-Mujica urged Castel-Orozco to go out and confront him, the roommate told police in the affidavit.

Castel-Orozco argued with Ramirez outside the apartment, and Ramirez shot at her, according to the affidavit. That bullet appeared to hit the apartment building behind Castel-Orozco. Ramirez got back into the truck and Castel-Orozco followed him to the driver’s side. That¶¶Ňőap when he shot her in the mouth, police said.

Contreras-Mujica asked Ramirez to take Castel-Orozco to the hospital, but he refused and drove away in a white car spotted on the apartment complex’s cameras, according to the affidavit.

The roommate described Contreras-Mujica as “having no emotion” about Castel-Orozco being shot, the affidavit stated. After the shooting, the roommate was “instructed by someone on the phone not to get involved,” police said.

Ramirez took a deal and pleaded guilty in November to second-degree murder, according to Jefferson County court records. That deal dropped additional felony charges of first-degree murder, witness intimidation and evidence tampering from his case.

Contreras-Mujica took a separate deal and pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and criminally negligent homicide, both felonies, court records show. Her deal dropped additional felony charges of first-degree murder, witness intimidation, evidence tampering and third-degree assault from her case.

Lakewood’s City Council  to “work toward the establishment” of an independent civilian oversight board for the city’s police department. And in Aurora, the city set aside about $330,000 this year to fund an Office of Police Accountability — even as city officials say they are still considering how oversight should be structured.

The creation of an independent oversight board in Lakewood would put the city into the company of just a handful of Front Range cities with such boards, including Denver and Boulder. The push for more oversight came to a head in Lakewood after the death of Jax Gratton, a 34-year-old transgender woman who disappeared in April and was found dead in June.

Lakewood police faced criticism for their handling of the case, including for announcing Gratton’s death by using her deadname and, later, for a lack of transparency about the investigation. Gratton’s case spurred the move toward an oversight committee, but the push is also rooted in wider issues around trust between police and community, Lakewood Councilwoman Isabel Cruz said.

“Although this specific incident really brought this to the fore, and the demands of community activists really pushed us, it is rooted in a lot of different conversations,” she said.

City Council members overwhelmingly voted Jan. 26 to create a 12-month committee to work toward the creation of a permanent oversight board. The temporary committee will have access to police records, completed internal affairs investigations and body-worn camera footage, and will be able to review complaints submitted to the police department.

At the end of the 12-month period, the committee will report to the City Council about how a permanent police oversight committee would be staffed and structured, among other recommendations.

Council members will then have the power to move forward with the permanent board or end the oversight effort.

Lakewood Police Department spokesman John Romero declined to comment on the push for oversight. About three dozen police officers packed last week’s council meeting, where Lakewood police Agent Quinn Pratt-Cordova, an executive board member of the , spoke against independent oversight.

An oversight board would be redundant, he said, and could damage officers’ trust in the city. Such oversight might “deter top talent,” from the police department, Pratt-Cordova said.

“Civilian oversight boards are rare and often follow severe systemic issues like those in other cities, issues that the majority of you don’t agree exist in the local police department,” Pratt-Cordova told council members. “The unnecessary creation of an oversight board attempts to apply an unwarranted national narrative to Lakewood PD.”

Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom said she hopes any permanent effort will be aimed at improving police-community relations in ways that go beyond traditional independent oversight.

“The oversight word, I think, it is a big sticking point and one that — especially for folks within the public safety realm — has a very specific meaning,” she said in an interview. “So what we end up with, it is hard to tell. But for me, and I think City Council has been pretty clear on this in multiple conversations over the last month, the end goal is ultimately to help our community members feel more comfortable reaching out when there is a need.”

In Denver, city officials created a citizen oversight board in 2004 after a Denver police officer shot and killed Paul Childs, a developmentally disabled 15-year-old boy. Boulder’s citizen oversight panel — — followed a 2019 incident in which an officer pulled a gun on a Black student who was picking up trash outside his home.

In Aurora, the police department entered into a consent decree — court-ordered reforms overseen by an independent monitor — after the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who died after Aurora police officers violently restrained him and paramedics injected him with a too-large dose of a powerful sedative.

McClain’s death was part of a pattern of racial bias and excessive force within the Aurora Police Department, state officials later found.

Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor hopes the city’s two-person Office of Police Accountability will serve as an independent monitor for the police department when police exit the consent decree and are no longer under the supervision of the . The creation of such a position is a requirement of the consent decree.

The new office would report to the city manager, Batchelor said, but would be created with built-in protections aimed at ensuring its independence, including putting into city ordinance the office’s right to have free and unfettered access to information and budgetary safeguards to ensure it could not be defunded by the city manager. The protections would mirror Aurora’s approach to its , which operates independently and would work in tandem with the new office, Batchelor said.

“I don’t get to tell the internal auditor, ‘That might make me look bad, don’t publish that,'” Batchelor said. “That can’t happen.”

The Office of Police Accountability, which Batchelor hopes to be ready to hire for in a few months, would have “contemporaneous oversight” of any city investigation, he said. The office would not oversee police discipline and would not conduct its own investigations into police misconduct. Instead, the employees would be able to flag problems or concerns about such investigations to Batchelor, the City Council or to the public.

Aurora Councilwoman Amy Wiles, who has helped to organize community meetings to discuss police oversight as recently as this week, said residents need a neutral place to report police misconduct.

“Right now, if you want to report something — you had a poor interaction with a police officer or you feel something wasn’t right — to call and report that is a bit invasive. You have to call the police department,” she said. “…So we are hoping this provides that level of security to community to say, ‘Hey if something went wrong, here is this neutral person you can reach out to.'”

The Office of Police Accountability could receive complaints of police misconduct directly from the public, Batchelor said, and then would “partner with the (police) department to make sure that any complaints are fully investigated.”

That approach concerns , Rocky Mountain state conference president for the NAACP.

“If you are going to have true transparency and true accountability, it can’t be that organization doing the investigation,” he said. “It has to be an independent organization. …If it goes back to the police department, I would have concerns (about whether) that is an independent department that is investigating abuse allegations.”

But he added that the Office of Police Accountability is “a good start,” and noted that it is already funded in a tough budget year.

Batchelor pointed out that some critical incidents, including police shootings, are already investigated by outside agencies. Colorado lawmakers from investigating their own police shootings in 2015. Other types of complaints are handled solely by the police department’s .

The city is still considering what the ultimate structure of the office and oversight will look like, Wiles said. The end design may include an advisory board of residents who work with the Office of Police Accountability in some fashion, though their role is limited by the city’s charter.

Her son, , was killed in Lakewood just a month or so before, and Uhl was lost. She stepped into the gathering of other grief-stricken parents feeling ambivalent, hesitant to open up, but desperate for help. She spoke at that first meeting, cried the whole time, and, afterward, the other parents hugged her. She walked out completely drained.

“I thought, ‘Never again, never again, never again,'” Uhl said.

But then she did go back. And she found a support that was unlike any other.

“What I saw were people who had survived it,” she said. “And at that time, I didn’t know how I was going to survive it. I was scared. It gave me hope to see these people who were functioning and moving on with their lives.”

Casandra Watkins was contemplating suicide before she found Parents of Murdered Children. On that particularly hard day after her son was killed, she called the phone numbers for the group’s organizers, going down a list of four. The third person answered her call.

“For the first time, I felt someone spoke my language,” Watkins said. “Someone understood me, got me, and I was not alone.”

Watkins and Uhl met through Parents of Murdered Children and attended a handful of monthly meetings before the local group — run by the same man for more than a decade — closed its doors in December 2022. The shuttered group was the only chapter in Colorado; the , founded in 1978, has chapters in 23 states.

The two mothers managed on their own for a while, then both Uhl and Watkins separately reached out to the national organization about restarting Denver’s chapter.

They reconnected and together, over the last year, they’ve reforged the local group. They now hope will bring the same kind of support they received to other parents.

“I’m not an attorney, I’m not a psychologist, I’m not an expert in anything,” Uhl said. “But what I can do is open a door once a month and give people some place to go.”

A stranger’s dispute

When Evan Wissing was a boy of 10 or maybe 12, the family stayed in a California vacation rental that Uhl thought was on the beach but was actually across a highway, connected to the beach by a high walking bridge. At the start of their trip, Uhl, who is afraid of heights, tried and failed to cross the bridge. Her knees buckled.

The next day, Wissing woke his mother up and vowed to get her across the bridge.

“I thought, ‘Oh (expletive),'” Uhl said. She tried to explain to him that she couldn’t do it. But he insisted, and she finally agreed to try. When they reached the bridge, Wissing told her to close her eyes. She squeezed them shut.

“He took my hand and he walked me across the bridge,” Uhl said. “It was just so Evan that he was not going to let that go. He was going to make that right for me. And he was always very much like that in taking care of people. And sometimes, not using the best judgment as an adult.”

Wissing grew into a man who loved riding motorcycles, skiing, snowboarding, hiking and camping. He was empathetic and kind — he once drove to a Denver bus station to buy a stranger a ticket after seeing her post on social media that she was stranded there with no way home.

In the final years of his life, he struggled with drug addiction. He never stole from Uhl, but he would steal from big box stores, then return the stolen items at other locations for cash to buy drugs.

He went to rehab twice and lived for a while with Uhl. He relapsed more than once, and, finally, in May 2022, she kicked him out. She thought if life was hard for him, if he didn’t have her home to stay in or her food to eat, he would stop using.

He was homeless when he was killed, and Uhl still feels guilty for that.

Wissing, 31, was killed in July 2022 at a Home Depot on West Colfax Avenue. He was trying to intervene in a dispute outside the building when the man involved in the dispute turned on him. Witnesses told police they saw Wissing back away with his hands wide, palms up. After putting some distance between them, Wissing turned away from the angry man.

The man picked up a rock and smashed it into the back of Wissing’s head. He fell instantly.

A sergeant from the Lakewood Police Department called Uhl a little after midnight. Her son was brain dead, but on life support, machines alone keeping his heart beating, the blood running through his veins. There was no chance of recovery. Uhl decided to turn off the machines just after 4:30 a.m.

Within 30 seconds, everything stopped.

Every second Saturday

On the second Saturday in November, Watkins and Uhl logged into Zoom for the regular meeting of .

The group met in person for a while after they restarted in December 2024, but they lost access to that space and moved online instead for virtual meetings. On this night, a handful of other users logged in, some with their cameras turned on and others without. Watkins kicked off the meeting with a slideshow of local victims’ photos set to music before opening up the floor for sharing and discussion.

After a while, a man whose son was shot to death in July spoke up. His son’s murder was the hardest thing he’s ever endured. And he hoped his question wasn’t rude, but he had to ask it.

“How do I learn to live my life with this?” he asked. The Denver Post agreed not to name the group’s participants to protect their privacy and allow them to speak freely.

Watkins answered first, urging the man to find something to hang on to. When her 19-year-old son, Kanajai Burton, was shot and killed in Denver in 2022, she knew she had to be there to raise his baby son, her grandson.

“None of us can answer that for you,” she said. “Everyone is different. There is no book. There’s nothing to tell us how to do it. We just do it. And we take it day by day, sometimes minute by minute.”

“It’s just, I can’t (expletive) function,” the man said, his voice tight with grief. “I’m not the same person anymore.”

A woman in the group, whose daughter was killed several years ago, offered that she sets a timer — allowing herself a limited window in which to give in to the grief. When the timer goes off, she turns her thoughts to positive memories and the day ahead.

Uhl weighed in, too.

“Especially in the beginning, you don’t think clearly, you don’t function well, you can’t plan, you can’t organize,” Uhl said. “It is such a shock to your system… When I think back on it, I don’t know how I made it through those first six months. But I did. And you will, too. You will slowly figure out how to live with this loss. Your life will not be the same and it won’t go away, but it will get easier to breathe.”

By 9 p.m., the man felt less alone. He thanked the group, bonded by the particular horribleness of homicide, for listening.

“We are your support, and we get it, we understand how the world just does not get us at all,” Watkins said.

When Wissing first died, Uhl for months struggled to sleep, instead replaying the moment they shut off the life support machines over and over again in her mind.

“And at some point I thought, this is going to eat me alive,” she said.

She forced herself to replace that memory with a different one: her son as a toddler, dressed in his little red pants and white turtleneck, his beloved blankie in tow.

When she remembered the way it felt to pull him in close, she fell asleep a little bit easier.