An information technology specialist by day, Medhurst is part of a small group of people — some retired, others with different day jobs — who volunteer with the Longmont Emergency Unit. Members of the all-volunteer search and rescue organization are trained in emergency medicine and respond to traffic crashes, conduct water rescues, and help police with traffic control and evidence recovery.

It¶¶Òőap not a glamorous job, but it¶¶Òőap a necessary one, Medhurst said.

“We’re problem solvers,” he said, adding, “We’re all here to keep the public safe, keep all their first responders safe.”

The unit has helped with emergency services in Longmont and around Boulder County since 1957. In recent years, however, the unit has struggled to recruit volunteers and secure enough funding.

“It¶¶Òőap getting a little tight. If we don’t figure it out, either with donations or other contracts, there is a reality that we may not be here in the future,” said former LEU Chief Mike Anderson. “Once we go through our savings, that¶¶Òőap it. Then we can’t pay the power bill.”

Change over time

The Longmont Emergency Unit formed in the summer of 1957 after the highlighted a need for people experienced in water-related rescues. The unit¶¶Òőap dive rescue team became one of the first in Colorado, according to Times-Call archives.

Over the decades, the all-volunteer group led searches for downed planes and missing people, rescued kids who fell into lakes and rivers, and extricated people from crashed cars. They’ve stationed themselves at the Boulder County Fair, parades and other large events in case of medical emergencies, and responded to large-scale events like the 2013 floods and the 2021 Marshall Fire.

Kevin Wells, the unit¶¶Òőap dive instructor, has been volunteering with the unit off and on since about 1996. In those early years, he recalls, LEU had about 55 members and a waiting list for those wanting to join.

Now, the unit has about 18 members, likely the smallest crew in quite a while, according to Anderson.

“As departments become bigger, better funded, they have less of a need (for) some of the things we did in the past,” Medhurst said.

Still, the group stays busy with about 200 to 300 calls each year — often helping with “oddball things” or traffic control during major incidents when police need all hands on deck, Medhurst said.

Longmont residents can often see LEU volunteers at the scenes of serious or fatal car crashes or SWAT calls — situations that require a lot of manpower.

In February, LEU was called to help when a in a hit-and-run crash in Erie.

“Our big vehicle is special; it has a light tower on it, and they needed that for the investigation as the sun went down,” said Rich Pateman, a Longmont resident and LEU volunteer.

“It¶¶Òőap a force multiplier, and to the taxpayers, a cost saving because we’re a lot cheaper than a fully paid employee,” Medhurst said.

The group works closely with Longmont police, with whom they have an “excellent relationship,” Medhurst said. Police have a substation in LEU’s building at 663 17th Avenue, where they sometimes stop by to write reports.

On New Year’s Day, some LEU volunteers and a Longmont officer were eating pizza together when police were dispatched to a .

“We all went running out the door together, and we worked the call together,” Medhurst recalled.

Mike Butler, who led the Longmont Police Department from 1994 to 2020, said the public safety department called on LEU “quite a bit” for a variety of different situations during his tenure.

“I can’t tell you how many times I would be driving through the city or walking through an area and see LEU resources at work,” Butler said. “We often commented within the organization how valuable they were and how much help they were.”

In a statement, Longmont spokesperson Rogelio Mares said LEU has been a partner to Longmont Public Safety for many years, “providing assistance on a wide range of public safety calls in our community.”

Mares would not comment further on whether police found LEU’s assistance useful or if they were concerned that LEU might not be around if it can’t secure more funding.

Financial trouble

In the early years, the unit raised funds for vehicles and its first “jaws of life” through spaghetti dinners and other fundraisers. Now, the unit operates on a budget of about $65,000 — most of which comes from a contract with the city of Longmont.

That¶¶Òőap not enough to sustain the unit, which spends tens of thousands of dollars each year on vehicle and workers’ compensation insurance, according to Anderson. In recent years, they’ve spent more than $20,000 on their aging building, after a roof leak turned into a flood and they discovered HVAC problems.

“Our expenses have gone up, and not just insurance, but gas, vehicle cost, medical gear. Everything costs more,” Medhurst said.

The unit has asked the city for more money, but the city isn’t “in a place” to give, Anderson said. The unit received just under $61,000 from the city last year, according to city records.

The organization is looking for grants, but applying can be challenging, as the all-volunteer agency doesn’t have a grant writer.

“We’ve watched our savings deplete, basically, over the last five years,” Anderson said.

“We try to be as frugal and as efficient as we can, but it¶¶Òőap getting to the point where to cut back any further is getting rid of core capabilities,” Medhurst said. “Do we get rid of the dive team? Do we get rid of the medical team?”

The unit might not be able to keep the lights on in a year or 18 months unless something changes, Anderson said.

“We would kind of have to figure out another plan or close, which we don’t want. We’ve been here (nearly) 70 years,” he said.

For many of LEU’s members, the work they do is a passion, and they hope to continue.

“You’re almost 70 years old, what are you doing on a  SWAT call?” Pateman, who is retired, recalls friends asking him. “I was like, well, it¶¶Òőap interesting work. It¶¶Òőap valuable work. It needs to be done.”

Medhurst agrees.

“You have those moments where you’re like, ‘hey, we made a difference here.’ You live for those moments.”

In elementary school, teachers placed them in separate classes just so Simone had a chance to learn independently from her outgoing, outspoken, stubborn identical twin. Simone was largely content in Savannah’s shadow, and, when it came down to it, Savannah usually followed her lead.

So when Simone wanted to go live with their mother for the first time when the twins were 14, Savannah agreed. They moved into a home in Denver’s Villa Park neighborhood, where their mother pulled them into a life they’d never known before: fast money, stolen cars, drugs, instability. Their mother regularly kicked the twins out; they never knew what would set her off.

When she put them out, the twins would call around to sleep at a friend’s house, or they’d steal a car, and sleep in that. One December day when the twins were 16, Savannah and her boyfriend climbed into a stolen car after they’d been kicked out. They sat on top of buckled seatbelts and headed to a friend’s house for the night. Simone stayed home.

The boyfriend, 16, was behind the wheel. He was on methamphetamine, fentanyl, marijuana. When police lights flashed behind them, he took off. Deputies pursued. Minutes later, he ran a red light and T-boned a Westminster police car.

Savannah was killed.

Now, more than three years later, Simone is left speaking for her twin.

“Don’t get me wrong, my sister made her mistakes,” she said. “But I don’t think she deserved to die for that. …I really just want Westminster to be held accountable.”

The recorded 376 vehicle pursuits over the last five years — more than twice as many chases as police recorded in Denver, or in Aurora, or in Colorado Springs, according to data collected by The Denver Post on nearly 1,400 police pursuits across 14 of Colorado’s most populous cities and four metro counties between 2020 and 2024.

Across those 18 cities and counties, seven people died in pursuits over those five years.

Four of those deaths happened in Westminster.

“For a jurisdiction to be that much smaller than Denver, chasing at twice the rate and producing a disproportionate share of the bad outcomes, that is a red flag,” said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the .

The Post examined the region’s approach to police pursuits after the quietly broadened its policy in October to allow officers to chase more suspects. Aurora police officers, long limited to pursuing only people suspected of dangerous felonies, can now pursue people suspected of driving under the influence and drivers of stolen vehicles, a move Chief Todd Chamberlain said is necessary to curb crime.

Aurora’s new policy bucks the trend across the Front Range, where the majority of law enforcement agencies included in The Post’s review limit pursuits to situations in which the driver is suspected of a violent felony or poses an immediate risk of injury or death to others if not quickly apprehended.

“We are in the public safety business, and pushing another driver to their limits — in a college town with bicyclists and people walking all over the place — that flies in the face of public safety,” said Jeff Swoboda, police chief in Fort Collins, where officers recorded just six pursuits in five years.  “…We regularly say, ‘Another day, another way.’ We will figure out other ways to go about capturing that person.”

In Westminster, where policy allows officers to chase for anything but a traffic infraction, Chief Norm Haubert said pursuits are part of the job. Officers there have pursued trespassing and shoplifting suspects, drivers with fake or missing plates, drivers suspected of being drunk or high.

“As the police chief, I know that our community expects us to apprehend those that are disturbing our community and victimizing our community,” he said. “And our community, quite honestly, is tired of being victimized. And so it is a balance of, how are we going to apprehend these offenders and hold them accountable?”

Across 1,397 police pursuits over the last five years, 10% of chases ended with at least one person injured, the data from the 18 jurisdictions examined by The Post showed. At least 179 people were hurt, including 82 suspects, 31 officers, and 24 bystanders and citizens, according to data provided by the agencies.

In Denver, where police engaged in 160 pursuits, about 9% of chases ended in injury, The Post found. In Colorado Springs, where police chased drivers 116 times, that number was 5%, The Post found. But in Aurora, with 126 pursuits, 25% of chases resulted in injury — a much higher rate than in similar jurisdictions.

The seven people killed in crashes during pursuits included two drivers, four passengers in the fleeing vehicle and, in Aurora, a bystander. The Post’s count does not include people who were killed in police shootings immediately after pursuits.

Among those killed in pursuit crashes, the oldest person was 42.

Savannah, at 16, was the youngest.

Hundreds of pursuits

Westminster’s permissive pursuits policy paints a picture of how chases unfold when officers have broad discretion. The agency recorded a vehicle pursuit, on average, every five days over the last five years, the data shows.

During a single seven-day span in January 2023, officers pursued a driver with a missing front plate (the 10:30 p.m. chase topped out at 85 mph on Interstate 25), a couple in a stolen Subaru (90 mph on West 112th Avenue at 5 p.m.), a reckless driver (80 mph on Federal Boulevard at 1 a.m.) and a pair of theft suspects (50 mph at 10:30 a.m. on West 80th Avenue).

None of those suspects were arrested.

Instead, officers ended each of the pursuits when they deemed conditions were too dangerous to continue. Officers called off the chases when the driver with a missing plate avoided a tire-deflation device and reached the interstate; when the stolen Subaru neared a busy intersection at 90 mph; when the reckless driver started throwing items out a window at police; and when the theft suspects cut across three lanes of traffic, ran a red light and started driving on the wrong side of the road.

Haubert cited officers’ ability to end pursuits as an important safety measure — officers who terminate chases must immediately pull over or make a U-turn, he said.

“Once they get into a pursuit, it is a constant balance of assessing the risk factors and how this might affect the community if this continues, versus the need to make that immediate apprehension,” he said.

But The Post found Westminster officers sometimes ended pursuits moments before crashes.

In January 2024, an officer following a suspect who drove away from a targeted traffic stop was told to cancel the pursuit as the driver sped around 70 mph or 80 mph on Federal Boulevard.

“As I began to slow down, stop and turn around to drive in the opposite direction, I saw a dust cloud erupt,” Officer Jesse Robinson wrote in a report. The driver had crashed into another car. Police reported no one was hurt.

In May 2020, a Westminster police officer spotted a stolen truck in a motel parking lot on Mariposa Street around 2 a.m. He followed the truck for a short distance until the driver started to speed up, then the officer began a pursuit. Other officers put out stop sticks — a tire-deflation device — and the truck hit the sticks at the intersection of 112th Avenue and Decatur Street.

The pursuit continued even as sparks flew from the truck’s now-deflated front tire, with the driver pushing to 70 mph on Federal Boulevard. The driver turned into a neighborhood, and the truck’s left tire flew off. The driver kept going, returning to Lowell Boulevard and increasing his speed.

The Westminster officer in pursuit wrote in a report that he realized he should end the chase.

“I decided to terminate the pursuit and began to slow down, but before I could air that over the radio, the vehicle continued south on Lowell through a red light without slowing. The vehicle then hit a dip on the south side of 92nd Ave. and appeared to become airborne,” Officer Tabe Skalla wrote in a report.

Westminster police repeated the officer’s claim that he was slowing down before the crash in a later news release — but a subsequent investigation by the found that the patrol cars were going at least 80 mph when the truck crashed.

Officers arrived at the crash to find the driver, 19-year-old Matthew Hesser, dead. His passenger, 17-year-old Hope Ishak, had been ejected from the truck and thrown into a retaining wall in front of Westminster Fire Station 2. She was also dead.

“These were kids,” said Layla Gantz, Hope’s aunt. “It wasn’t like they were professional criminals. She was a young, beautiful girl who got cheated out of graduating, cheated out of prom, cheated out of being a mom.”

Hope had been in foster care — in the custody of the — before the pursuit, according to the Colorado State Patrol. She’d run away a few days before and was listed as a missing person when she died.

Autopsies showed both she and Hesser had methamphetamine and other drugs in their systems, and both had open warrants for their arrests, the state patrol investigation found.

After Hope’s death, Gantz started calling for Westminster to limit police pursuits. City officials expressed condolences but did nothing else, she said.

“They just think they are justified because they have a badge,” Gantz said.

Every pursuit is carefully reviewed, Haubert said, with layers of supervisors considering whether the officers acted within policy, what drove their decision-making and whether changes should be made going forward.

“There is a system in place. It’s been in place for many years. We hold the officers to a high standard,” he said. “We hold them accountable, but we also hold the supervisors and ourselves accountable, making sure that they are adhering to the policy — understanding that our policy is different than some of the other agencies.”

Westminster police found officers acted within department policy in all three of its fatal pursuits, as well as in each of the January 2023 pursuits mentioned in this story. No officers were disciplined in connection with those chases.

The police department hasn’t identified any wider pattern of officers calling off pursuits too late, the chief said. Officers can’t control what happens after a pursuit ends, he added.

“Obviously, up until that point, we haven’t been able to control what the suspect is doing,” he said. “And when we disengage from the pursuit, we still are not able to control what the suspect is doing. So from there, although horrifically tragic, and tragic for our community and for the family, the actions of that suspect are still out of our control.”

Gantz still talks to Hope each morning, even five years after her death, she said. The teenager loved animals, especially cats. She was creative, smart. And she’s missed. Every Sunday, Gantz watches an singing “Just Give Me a Reason” by Pink.

“I tell her I’m sorry,” Gantz said. “I’m sorry nobody was there to protect her.”

Nine seconds

In Savannah’s case, Westminster police officers ended their pursuit nine seconds before the fatal crash.

The pursuit started at Federal Boulevard and West 64th Avenue in Adams County, when a sheriff’s deputy ran the license plate for the Kia Optima that Savannah and her boyfriend were in and realized the car was stolen.

It was 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 29, 2021, police records show. The deputy followed the 16-year-olds as they drove north on Federal. He didn’t activate his emergency lights until they crossed under U.S. 36. Then, the deputy flashed his lights.

Savannah’s boyfriend hit the gas, speeding north on Federal. Deputies put out stop sticks at Federal and West 84th Avenue and shredded the Kia’s rear tire, which sent sparks flying. The deputies kept chasing as the boyfriend passed West 92nd Avenue traveling 90 mph, then swung west onto West 104th Avenue.

The Adams County sheriff’s deputies ended their pursuit when the Kia reached Sheridan Boulevard, the edge of their jurisdiction. They turned off their lights and sirens, but couldn’t find a place to turn off and ended up following the vehicle longer, according to the Colorado State Patrol. They saw Savannah’s boyfriend turn on Westminster Boulevard and alerted Westminster police at 1:09 a.m.

A Westminster police officer spotted the vehicle minutes later at Pierce Street and West 92nd. He pulled a U-turn to follow behind it. The car slowed like it might stop. The officer turned on his police lights at 1:16 a.m. But 18 seconds later, the officer radioed that the Kia sped away, that he’d ended the pursuit, was turning off his lights and pulling over.

Nine seconds after that, Savannah’s boyfriend ran a red light at about 75 mph and slammed into a Westminster police car in the intersection of West 92nd and Harlan Street, smashing the front of the police car and setting off the airbags. The officer and a person doing a ride-along that night were both injured, not seriously.

The Kia was crushed. Savannah’s boyfriend screamed at her to wake up.

“Princess, I’m sorry,” he said, according to a state patrol report.

A Westminster police about the crash later made no mention of the pursuit by Adams County deputies. The department said only that officers had learned the stolen car might be in the area, then spotted it with a blown-out tire and hazard lights flashing.

“Westminster police did not pursue the vehicle,” the news release said.

How Westminster counts pursuits

Haubert, Westminster’s police chief, thinks his department might have over-counted its pursuits.

Between 2020 and late 2023, the agency considered any incident in which an officer tried to stop a vehicle and then followed it when it did not stop to be a pursuit, he said. But in late 2023 or early 2024, the agency changed its internal approach to count incidents as pursuits only if the suspect driver made an “overt act” to avoid officers, Haubert said.

“An example of that would be traffic officers running radar on the highway,” he said. “They get a vehicle that’s going 80 miles an hour. Traffic officer gets there, they get behind them with their lights and sirens. The vehicle doesn’t make an overt act to avoid the officer, but they continue on at 80 miles an hour.”

Before, Westminster would consider that event to be a pursuit because the officer followed the suspect with their lights and sirens on, he said. But now, they would not count that as a pursuit, but or failure to yield, because the driver did not make an “overt act” to the chief said.

Westminster recorded 96 pursuits in 2020, 93 in 2021, 73 in 2022, 76 in 2023, and 38 in 2024 for a total of 376 pursuits, records show. Officers followed suspects for at least some period of time in each of those incidents, Haubert said.

“Whether we were behind them for five minutes or five seconds, we said that was a pursuit,” Haubert said.

The department was unable to provide a breakdown of which of those pursuits might now be considered eludings. Spokeswoman Samantha Spitz also could not provide a count of eluding incidents for any year except 2024, when she said the department recorded 72 eludings.

Westminster’s 38 pursuits in 2024 is the same as the number of pursuits in Denver that year, a jurisdiction nearly five times bigger geographically and with six times Westminster’s population.

In Denver, the city considers an incident to be an eluding when an officer attempts to stop a vehicle and the vehicle takes off, but the officer does not follow. The city recorded 4,561 eludings between 2020 and 2024. Officers carried out 160 pursuits.

Thornton police recorded 2,738 eludings across those five years, and pursued 99 times.

In Arvada, a neighboring city to Westminster with a similar population, the city recorded 898 eludings between 2021 and 2024, spokesman Dave Snelling said. Arvada pursued those fleeing suspects just 10 times over that four-year span. The city limits its pursuits to situations in which the driver has committed, is about to commit or is wanted for a violent felony, the department’s policy shows.

“A great percentage of them are going to be attempted traffic stops, and we won’t pursue for just a traffic violation,” Snelling said. “Some of those are stolen cars… some are vehicles without license plates.”

Westminster’s much broader policy for pursuits is constantly under review, Haubert said. Looking back at the last five years, he thinks officers struck the right balance between pursuits and public safety.

“I think the answer today is yes, but that is something that we will continuously evaluate,” he said. “…Is this what is best for our community and for their safety and to apprehend those that are violating our community? So, yes, today. But that is under constant scrutiny by us each day.”

Aurora’s new approach to pursuits

In October, the Aurora Police Department opened up its pursuits policy, expanding it to allow officers to chase suspected drunken drivers and to remove a requirement that a felony cited to justify a chase must involve a threat or use of deadly force within the past 24 hours. The police department made no public announcements about the change at the time.

In March, the department changed the policy again to explicitly say officers could chase drivers in stolen vehicles. This time, the department publicized the change.

Police in Aurora can now pursue any suspected felon if the officer believes that person poses “a serious risk to public safety if they are not immediately apprehended,” and can chase drivers suspected of “a crime involving a firearm that poses a serious threat of harm to the public.”

Chamberlain, the city’s new police chief, made the change even though 25% of the agency’s chases over the last five years resulted in injury or death — more than double the rate in Denver and more than three times that of Colorado Springs, The Post found.

People were hurt in 31 of the agency’s 126 chases, according to data provided by police.

The Aurora Police Department took 19 reports of injuries to suspects, 12 reports of injuries to officers and four reports of bodily harm involving others during that time, according to data provided by the agency. One bystander, Oliver Jose Zeledon Gongora, 24, was killed last year when a fleeing carjacking suspect crashed into his parked vehicle.

“It¶¶Òőap a huge risk doing pursuits,” Chamberlain said. “There’s no getting around it. But there’s also that point of risk aversion, and if you’re so risk-averse to anything that you allow people to be victimized, to me, that¶¶Òőap the problem.”

Chamberlain said he weighed the rate of injuries and deaths resulting from pursuits before signing off on the policy changes and noted that most pursuits did not result in injuries. He hopes the threat of police chasing and arresting suspects — particularly intoxicated drivers and car thieves — will deter crime.

“People know, ‘Hey, I can just steal cars, I can victimize people, I can do all kinds of stuff, and I can get away with it,’ ” he said of the department’s prior policy. More than 27,000 suspected stolen vehicles and 8,400 drunken drivers have been reported to Aurora police since 2019, according to the department.

In Fort Collins, which had the fewest chases among the departments reviewed by The Post, Chief Swoboda said he wants his officers’ actions to match how the broader justice system handles an alleged crime like a stolen vehicle.

“They’re not getting large bonds, they’re not going to prison for this, so the suggestion that somehow police need to be the ones to say this person needs to be held accountable when the consequences aren’t that severe — we can’t care more than the public,” he said. “…Families will be forever changed, innocent people, police officers are getting hurt and killed, and for a charge that someone is going to get a $1,000 bond and maybe community corrections?”

He’d rather see his officers recover a stolen vehicle when it is parked, or approach when the driver stops for gas, or follow a vehicle covertly until the driver gets out.

“There’s a safer way to go about it,” Swoboda said.

Police departments have started to use alternatives to pursuits, like , a system that lets police shoot a GPS tracker onto a car and track it remotely, or the , which the Colorado State Patrol uses to stop cars by entangling them in webbing.

Denver police used StarChase 920 times between January 2019 and December 2024, a spokesman said. The agency pays $21,000 for 14 user licenses. The state patrol used a Grappler 163 times between August 2021 and March, with 98 successful deployments, Sgt. Patrick Rice said.

Snelling, with the Arvada Police Department, said officers found the StarChase system to be unreliable. The GPS tracker often would not stick to the suspect car, he said, or suspects would discover the device, stop and pull it off, he said.

Haubert said he expects technology will continue to improve and reduce the need for pursuits over the next decade.

“That is another task that we have, and a duty that we have to our community, to make sure we are utilizing technology to minimize the risk to our community,” he said.

The idea that pursuits have a deterrent effect isn’t backed by research, said Nix, the .

“I don’t think there’s any good evidence that happens,” he said. “…In agencies that did move toward more restrictive policies, the sky did not fall.”

Rather, Nix said research “has consistently shown that pursuits really don’t justify the risk.”

The , a organization that issues guidance for police departments, recommends that  that indicate the suspect poses an immediate danger to the public, independent from their driving behavior while fleeing from police.

The practice of chasing drunk drivers is particularly controversial. Among the 18 agencies reviewed by The Post, only Aurora and the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office explicitly allow pursuits of suspected intoxicated drivers. In Arapahoe County, such pursuits are allowed only if the driver stays under the posted speed limit.

Swoboda said pursuing impaired drivers doesn’t make sense.

“I’ve heard it said, ‘The only thing worse than a drunk driver is a drunk driver being chased by police,’ ” he said. “Someone who is already impaired, there is increased risk of them being in a crash, and now they are going to be glued to the review mirror
 what is the expectation they are going to be able to safely drive that way?”

Chamberlain argued officers have a responsibility to remove drunk and drug-impaired drivers from the road before they injure or kill someone.

“I do think there’s got to be some point where you say enough is enough,” he said. “Where enough people have been injured, enough people have been hurt, enough people have been victimized, and again, if law enforcement doesn’t do that intervention, then who is going to do it?”

Aurora’s officers are trained to pursue safely, the chief said. Officer recruits receive 90 hours of driving training and 32 hours of training on vehicle stops, contacts and searches during the department’s academy program, which is roughly two times the amount of training required by the state, police spokesman Matthew Longshore said.

The academy also features four “scenario days” that include simulated pursuits, and vehicle pursuits are among the topics of in-service trainings for officers after graduation.

The who is overseeing court-ordered reforms at the Aurora Police Department cautioned in an April report that the new pursuit policy will require officers to exercise sound judgment and restraint, and that the broader policy makes supervisor oversight “even more critical.” The monitor recommended that all Aurora police cars be equipped with dashboard cameras so that pursuits can be documented in their entirety.

“This isn’t anything that I took lightly,” Chamberlain said. “I really didn’t, and I mean that sincerely, from my heart. I see a department that’s controlled. I see a department that understood the policy. I see a department that could weigh the risk as opposed to the value of getting somebody.”

Stolen vehicle pursuits

Amanda Hernandez-Torres said she made sure everyone knew the 2000 Chevrolet Cavalier was stolen before she let her three passengers get inside on Jan. 24, 2023.

She sped away when Westminster officers tried to pull her over just before 1:30 a.m. that night. The officers knew the car, worth about $1,400, was stolen and connected to an armed robbery that had happened in Denver a few days earlier.

Hernandez-Torres drove through an officer’s attempted , an attempt by the officer to force the car to spin out and stop. And then she sped over stop sticks on Sheridan Boulevard and kept going.

She briefly drove the wrong way on U.S. 36, before crossing the center line and speeding at 92 mph onto the off-ramp for Church Ranch Boulevard. Inside the car, her passengers screamed at her to stop and let them out, from First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King in which she declined to bring criminal charges against the Westminster officers.

Hernandez-Torres lost control, hit a ditch and the vehicle went airborne for 38 feet, crashing into a pole, then a retaining wall.

“I remember… feeling the impact of something but I’m not sure what,” Hernandez-Torres said in a message from the . “Everything was black until I watched the windshield get smaller and smaller each time the car flipped.”

Everyone in the car was seriously hurt — and one passenger, Nahtanha Ortiz, 42, was killed. Hernandez-Torres woke up three days later in a hospital; she’d broken her back in three places and fractured 10 ribs.

She healed for four months, then she turned herself in to face vehicular homicide and related criminal charges (she was not charged with the Denver armed robbery). She pleaded guilty in late 2023 and was sentenced to seven years in prison. The 27-year-old will be eligible for parole in 2026.

“Her life was worth so much more than what my actions caused,” Hernandez-Torres said of Ortiz. “If I would of had the slightest clue what would happen if I ran from the cops I would of stopped the second the cop got behind me. Nobody’s life is worth the careless(ness) and recklessness I showed that night. No amount of trouble you could get in for something so stupid as a stolen car is worth anyone’s life or well-being and safety.”

Most Front Range law enforcement agencies do not pursue stolen vehicles, but those that conduct such pursuits do them often, The Post found.

Among 991 pursuits in which agencies provided a reason for the pursuit to The Post, stolen vehicles were the second-most common reason cited. The top reason for pursuits was a felony crime.

The majority of stolen vehicle chases were conducted by the Westminster Police Department and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, both of which by policy. Westminster pursued at least 142 stolen vehicles over five years — 38% of all of the department’s cases — while Douglas County pursued 27 — 68% of its pursuits, the data shows.

Nine different jurisdictions reported at least one chase for a stolen vehicle — even in some jurisdictions where policies prohibited such chases, The Post found. In Loveland, six of the department’s 22 total chases were found to violate department policy, including one pursuit for a stolen vehicle, its data showed.

In Denver, the only fatal pursuit in five years happened during an out-of-policy pursuit for a suspected stolen vehicle. The involved officers initially lied about engaging in the pursuit, an internal affairs investigation found.

Denver police officers Matthew Prell and Jonathan Hayes spotted a Kia Soul in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven at 7676 E. Colfax Ave. on Oct. 27, 2022. When officers pulled up, the driver took off.

They followed, leaving the parking lot at 69 mph, according to data pulled from the patrol vehicle. Over the next few minutes, the officers tailed the Kia driver through the neighborhood. Surveillance footage from Ashley Elementary School showed the Kia speeding past at about 75 mph, and the officers driving by at about 68 mph five seconds later, according to officer disciplinary records.

The officers lost sight of the Kia, but kept searching for it while driving at high speeds. The driver, Cassandra Livingston, 24, lost control of the car and crashed into a tree between Syracuse and Roslyn streets. She was killed.

For the first year after Livingston’s death, her mother, Tillie McHone, believed what the police told her: that her daughter died in a single-vehicle crash into a tree. When she found out officers actually pursued her daughter — through a news story about the officers’ discipline — it was a total shock, she said.

Prell and Hayes served 40-day suspensions for the pursuit and concurrent 30-day suspensions for making misleading statements, police records show.

“It was crazy, they traumatized us all over again,” she said.

Denver police Chief Ron Thomas said officers must constantly weigh the risk to public safety and the need for immediate apprehension when considering whether to start or continue a vehicle pursuit. The city’s policy allows for pursuits only if the suspect’s actions are so dangerous they present an imminent threat of serious injury or death, or if the suspect committed or threatened to commit a violent felony or a felony with a deadly weapon.

Denver police don’t pursue for stolen vehicles or most property crimes, Thomas said.

“Certainly arguments can be made… that quite often stolen cars, the reason they are stolen is so they can commit some subsequent crime and that crime may be a violent crime,” Thomas said. “…But I just think what they might do is different from what we know they are going to do and are doing. So if all we know is it is a stolen car, but we don’t know that they’re getting ready to go do a drive-by shooting or there is some other connection to a violent crime, if we don’t know that, I just don’t think it is consistent with our values to put the community at significant risk.”

McHone is now suing the police department. She’s angry and distrustful of law enforcement.

“If a regular human being was acting that way, they would consider it vehicular homicide,” McHone said. “An officer should take the same kind of heed for any kind of force that could be deadly.”

She regularly visits the tree where Livingston died, its branches decorated with flowers, crosses, lights and a heart-shaped wreath. She remembers her daughter.

“When she was laughing, it was just infectious,” McHone said. “She just lit up the whole room.”

A final goodbye

The officers didn’t come to Simone Pineda’s door until around 4 a.m. on Dec. 29, 2021, almost three hours after her twin crashed into the Westminster police car on West 92nd Avenue.

She can still recite what they said: Savannah had been in a bad car accident; she was being life-flighted to . They needed to get there as soon as they could.

“I honestly just dropped,” Simone said. “Her name came out of their mouth and my knees hit the floor.”

They rushed to the hospital in Aurora. Simone cried and screamed and prayed on the ride over. But when they arrived, Savannah wasn’t there. They waited and waited, and, finally, the twins’ mother got a call from a chaplain at  in Wheat Ridge. He told them to come there instead.

“My heart dropped,” Simone said. “Because I knew she was gone.”

At Lutheran, Simone found her twin in a hospital bed. She grabbed Savannah’s hand, and an alarm went off. The doctors tried to get Savannah back after that, but they never did.

“It was like she waited for me to leave,” Simone said, tears running down her cheeks.

After the crash, Savannah’s boyfriend was arrested and charged as a juvenile with vehicular homicide and other charges. He’s already out of juvenile detention, Simone said; she’s seen him a few times since the crash.

She’s tried to forgive him but can’t. He’s still living a lifestyle rife with drugs and stolen cars, and he’s gotten into at least one more pursuit with police, she said.

“We got into a messed-up life,” Simone said. “A life we never should have lived. But we also knew what came with the life. Being in those cars, we knew a high-speed chase was bound to come. When it gets to a high-speed chase, there is no stopping until you know it is safe.”

But it’s different now. At the end of 2023, Simone cut ties with her mother, moved back in with her grandmother, and systematically dismantled her connections to that old life. It was hard, and she’s proud that she did it.

She went back to school and is on track to graduate with her high school diploma this year, at age 19. She’s launching a hair braiding business, Braids by Mona, in large part because that was Savannah’s dream. She’s the one who taught Simone how to braid, and Simone is determined to make the business happen, for both of them.

“It just breaks my heart, because, I wish I would have realized all this (expletive) sooner,” Simone said. “And I would have got us out of that lifestyle. I feel like my sister would still be here if we would have got ourselves out of that.”

She paused.

“We live, and we learn.”

When deputies and fire crews arrived at the factory, in the 11900 block of Sugar Mill Road on the southeast side of Longmont, the two-story building was already engulfed in flames, sheriff’s officials said in a .

Crews were not able to fight the fire because of hazardous materials inside the building and weather conditions, sheriff’s officials said. Instead, they monitored the building while it burned overnight.

Sheriff’s officials said the cause of the fire remains under investigation. Sugar Mill Road was closed Tuesday morning and authorities said people should avoid the area.

The Mountain View Fire Department, Longmont Fire Department, Longmont Police Department and the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office all responded to the early morning fire.

This isn’t the first time the factory, which closed its doors in 1977, has burned.

Fires sparked in 2016 in a former tool room on the property, which caused part of the building to collapse; on Christmas morning in 2017; in 2020 in a collapsed building on the property’s southside; and in August 2024, according to the . Longmont Fire Department officials told the Times-Call that they are called out to fires at the factory .

Firefighters tried to put out the flames in last August’s fire but eventually let the fire burn itself out for safety reasons, .

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Robert Lewandowski of Austin, Texas, is suing Officer Stephen Desmond, claiming Desmond violated his rights by him.

Lewandowski alleges he was arrested, charged and prosecuted over false allegations that he stole stock from his mother, changed his mother’s will to make himself the sole beneficiary, made himself power of attorney and stole cash and other funds from her bank account, according to an amended complaint filed in federal district court in September. Lewandowski’s mother lived in Longmont at the time.

He was found not guilty on six counts of felony theft and one count of felony money laundering by a Boulder County jury in 2021, according to court records.

Lewandowski’s lawsuit claims Desmond “ran with” made-up stories by Lewandowski’s sister and failed to investigate them or consider other evidence, including Lewandowski’s sister later walking back her statements.

“…Desmond had no probable cause to pursue this malicious prosecution against Mr. Lewandowski, yet he fabricated evidence in his sworn arrest warrant affidavit to convince the state in the criminal trial that there was probable cause when there was in fact none,” Lewandowski wrote in the lawsuit.

Desmond missed or ignored key facts, like Lewandowski using a bill pay service on his mother’s Wells Fargo account to pay her bills — which Desmond claimed was him transferring her money into his own bank account — and that they did not have a joint Capitol One bank account, according to the complaint.

Longmont Public Safety declined to comment on the lawsuit because of the ongoing litigation. Desmond’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment and Desmond did not comment on the case.

A federal magistrate rejected Desmond’s motion to dismiss the case in December, and on Jan. 10, Desmond’s attorney filed an objection to the magistrate’s decision, according to court records.

Desmond’s attorney argued the federal court is ignoring the Boulder County District Court¶¶Òőap decisions in the case, including finding probable cause in the initial criminal case and ruling that none of Desmond’s statements were intentionally or recklessly false.

Lewandowski is seeking a jury trial and unspecified monetary damages.

This time last year, 34 people had been killed by police officers and sheriff’s deputies across Colorado and 19 others had been injured, according to a dataset compiled by The Denver Post.

Police have fatally shot 36 people this year and injured another 20, according to the dataset. Now, Colorado is only eight police shootings away from passing last year’s total entirely.

If those eight shootings are fatal, it will mark the deadliest year for Colorado since 2020, when police shot and killed at least 43 people, according to Mapping Police Violence. The national project tracks fatal police shootings across the country.

Colorado currently ranks as the sixth deadliest state in the country for police shootings, with 6.4 people killed per million by police so far this year, according to Mapping Police Violence.

“Civilians killed by law enforcement personnel has been on the rise over the past 20 years,” said Dr. Lee Friedman, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago who helped spearhead the Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project.

Friedman said nonfatal shootings were also on the rise across the country until 2013 when they suddenly dropped and have since held relatively steady.

“The data does not provide a clear picture of the driving factors because there has been no investment in quality data,” Friedman said.

He said the increase in police shootings appears to be linked to multiple factors, including specific law enforcement agencies’ training of officers, local crime rates, firearm ownership, if agencies outside of law enforcement respond to mental health crises and community diversity.

Prior research from the Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project showed shootings increased as a community’s average household income decreased, but shootings declined as communities became more diverse, Friedman said.

The Thornton Police Department took the lead this year as the deadliest city in the state, according to The Denver Post dataset. The department documented two police shootings in 2023 — one fatal and one nonfatal — but rocketed up to seven shootings and six deaths in 2024.

Denver’s police shootings in 2024 fell to two fatal and two nonfatal after eight police shootings in 2023, according to the dataset. That year, six of the victims were armed. Four died and four were injured.

The Colorado Springs Police Department followed closely behind Denver each year with five shootings, three fatal and two nonfatal, in 2023 and four shootings, three fatal and one nonfatal, in 2024, according to Denver Post records.

Aurora has documented three shootings of its own each year. One was nonfatal in 2023, but all three were fatal in 2024, the dataset shows. Pueblo’s police department also fatally shot three people in 2024, up from two people in 2023.

The Lakewood Police Department, Fountain Police Department, Fort Collins Police Department, El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, Commerce City Police Department and Broomfield Police Department have each confirmed two police shootings so far in 2024 and the following agencies have documented one:

• Greeley Police Department;
• Englewood Police Department;
• Adams County Sheriff’s Office;
• Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office;
• Littleton Police Department;
• Craig Police Department;
• Windsor Police Department;
• Alamosa County Sheriff’s Office;
• Montrose County Sheriff’s Office;
• Larimer County Sheriff’s Office;
• Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office;
• Elbert County Sheriff’s Office;
• Glenwood Springs Police Department;
• Saguache County Sheriff’s Office;
• Longmont Police Department;
• Milliken Police Department;
• Weld County Sheriff’s Office;
• Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office;
• Colorado State Patrol.

Nearly a dozen agencies where at least one officer fatally shot Coloradans in 2024 had zero shootings last year, according to Denver Post data.

However, 13 Colorado police departments and sheriff’s offices that killed one person in 2023 have reported zero shootings so far this year.

Colorado remains among the five states with the highest rates of fatal police shootings in the country, according to research from Everytown for Gun Safety.

From 2016 to 2020, of the 25 largest cities in the United States, Denver had the highest rate of fatal police shootings, with an average of nearly 10 fatal shootings per million residents, according to Everytown.

According to a news release from the city, police responded at 12:32 a.m. Friday to two people fighting in front of 321 Main St. The two men had just left the Speakeasy Bar and Venue at 301 Main St.

During the altercation, one man was shot and killed. The suspected shooter called 911 and remained on the scene until police arrived, according to the release.

Police said no arrests have been made and the shooting remains under investigation. There is no threat to the community, the release stated.

The name of the victim has not been released.

Anyone who was at the Speakeasy Bar and Venue between 9 p.m. Thursday and 12:30 a.m. Friday is asked to contact Longmont police Detective Jon High at 303-651-8584. Police are also seeking any video of this incident taken by businesses or bystanders.

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The man, a resident of a mountain community near Denver, was wearing a wing suit at the time of his death about 3:27 p.m., Longmont Public Safety said in a Facebook post.

The man was a participant of Mile Hi Skydiving in Longmont, and the death happened south of the Longmont airport.

Longmont police said the Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the death.

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The girl, 17, was last seen just after midnight Saturday, and CBI issued a missing Indigenous person alert Saturday evening.

CBI reported she was found safe at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday.

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Longmont police officers about 8 p.m. Wednesday responded to a shooting at the Countryside Village mobile home park in the 1400 block of South Collyer Street, where a shooter in a dark-colored sedan fired multiple rounds into a home then fled the scene, the .

The gunfire struck the girl, who suffered a “life-threatening bodily injury to her torso”, and officers gave her first aid until medical personnel arrived.

An ambulance then took her to a hospital for surgery, and officials said she was in stable condition as of Wednesday night.

Detectives are looking for any video surveillance footage from the area to help them in the investigation, and anyone with information can contact Detective Rachael Sloan-Stogsdill at 303-651-8544 or Detective John Winship at 303-774-3698.

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Ritchie, 36, was found guilty of first-degree murder after deliberation Wednesday for the death of Jason Schaefer, 33, who was fatally shot while on his postal route in Longmont on Oct. 13, 2021. In closing statements, Ritchie was described as the “eyes and ears” of Devan Schreiner, 28, who was found guilty in March of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for fatally shooting Schaefer.

“With today’s guilty verdict, the two people responsible for this premeditated and cold-blooded murder will be held fully responsible for killing Jason Schaefer while he was delivering mail,” Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said. “These two robbed Jason’s family and U.S. Postal colleagues of a beloved son, father, and friend. Since the first hours after Jason’s murder, I have been deeply grateful for the strong partnership between the Longmont Police Department, U.S. Postal Inspectors, and our team.”

During the trial, evidence was presented of Ritchie’s cell phone being tracked along Schaefer’s route, before he was seen on surveillance footage at a Loveland Hooters at the time of Schaefer’s death. Prosecutors argued Tuesday that Ritchie assisted Schreiner in making a plan to kill Schaefer, which included setting up an alibi for Schreiner and tracking Schaefer over the course of his route to inform Schreiner of his whereabouts.

Prosecutors said Ritchie also encouraged Schreiner to murder Schaefer and presented a text message to the jury from Ritchie to Schreiner that read, “You could just kill them both and make it look like they killed each other.”

According to an affidavit, just after 12:30 p.m. Oct.13, 2021, Schaefer was shot three times next to his postal delivery van, near a cluster of mailboxes on Heatherhill Street just west of Renaissance Drive.

According to the affidavit, detectives said that on the morning of the shooting, cell phone data showed Schreiner and Ritchie were both at her Fort Collins apartment before they drove to Ritchie’s home in Loveland.

At that point, it appeared that Ritchie took Schreiner to the Loveland post office, after which Schreiner began her route as a Loveland postal carrier and Ritchie drove into Longmont and began following Schaefer on his route.

A rideshare vehicle used by the Englewood prison where Ritchie worked as a guard was seen on camera several times following Schaefer’s postal van, and Ritchie’s cell phone data and GPS data from Schaefer’s postal scanner also appeared to be in the same location for most of the morning, the affidavit states.

Shortly before the murder, Schneider is suspected of parking at Ritchie’s house, where her phone remained stagnant for the next couple of hours.

Surveillance cameras then detected Schreiner’s SUV — identifiable by a missing hubcap on its passenger side — driving into the neighborhood of the shooting, ultimately parking on Renaissance Drive south of the shooting scene.

Security cameras picked up a person walking from the area of the SUV north toward Schaefer. Another security camera picked up the person approaching Schaefer’s van, detected the sound of gunshots, and then showed the person running from the area, according to the affidavit.

Security cameras then captured the person running south before Schreiner’s SUV was again seen, this time leaving the area.

The suspect in the videos was originally described as a man in a dark hoodie, wearing a blue mask. But detectives said a photo later recovered from Ritchie’s phone depicts Schreiner in a similar outfit.

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