That was the difference in last year’s Class 5A girls 100-meter dash final, where — 11.75 seconds to Smith’s 11.76.

On Saturday morning at Jeffco Stadium, the Fossil Ridge senior made good on her promise to finish her prep career as Colorado’s fastest female, surging past Welling and the seven other runners on the track. She was uncatchable once she hit top speed, breaking away in the final 20 meters to . Welling took second in 11.78, while Denver South senior Mariame Marico was third in 12:03.

“That really pushed me and motivated me,” Smith said after being swarmed by teammates in the finish area. “Every day when I wanted to just lie in my bed, I was like, ‘No, this is the goal.’ And I kept my mind on it. And all of my family and my friends were there to support me through it. Just being able to come out and get my goal, it����ap been so relieving and exciting.”

, with Smith winning in 23.81 and Welling taking the silver in 24.13.

Welling, a junior who also beat Smith in the 200 last year, will get another crack at both titles in 2027. But she said she’ll miss the friendly rivalry she shared with Smith, who is committed to running at Oregon State next year.

“I’m really sad this is the last time I get to race her,” Welling said. “I love racing her because I feel like when we race, either one of us can get it, and I love that. Obviously, I’m sad for not getting the win. But I can’t be mad about it, because she ran insane times today … It����ap bittersweet that this is the last time.”

Smith would have faced a tighter . She was just 3 hundredths faster than Sierra senior Suraiya Payne, who won the 4A crown in 11:63 ahead of Holy Family senior Claire Tannehill in 11.64.

After falling short of her goals last year, Smith said she had to learn not to rush to become faster. It sounds counterintuitive, but she had the ideal coach to help her.

Fossil Ridge is led by , who still holds the record for the fastest 100-meter dash ever run in Colorado. When Bozmans clocked 10.27 at an April meet during his senior year in 2012, it was a time that no other high school sprinter in the country beat that year.

Bozmans went on to race at TCU, where he was a three-time All-American in relay events despite being hampered by an array of injuries.

Seeing Smith run down the same titles as he did on Saturday, Bozmans said nervous anticipation quickly gave way to joy.

“I see how hard she works. And oftentimes she reminds me a lot of myself,” he said. “Just the way she runs and that effort. You don’t see it too often here, but when we go to practice, she’s about her business.”

That business included scrutinizing every aspect of Smith’s form and her approach. A long strider, Smith said she had to learn “not to rush things and fully go through the process of acceleration.”

“Just with my build, it����ap always been the beginning of the race that I’m either right there or just a little bit behind,” she said. “I’m not the strongest, and I don’t have the biggest build when it comes to explosiveness, but definitely, top-end speed is what helps me.”

“When Addy gets up and going, there’s nobody else that can run with her,” Bozmans said. “It����ap like, we just have to get there. And once we get there, we’ve just gotta hold onto it.”

Smith also competes in the long jump and took fourth in this year’s final. The 100 has been her best event in high school, but with her long legs, she said the 200 could become her signature event in college. Bozmans hopes she continues to run relay legs as well.

As for who would win a foot race between Colorado’s fastest female and the coach who held that title among the state’s fastest boys 14 years ago?

“I think I’d still get her,” Bozmans said. “But it����ap getting more interesting — that����ap for sure.”

Roxy’s perfect run

Cheyenne Wells’ Roxy Unruh was smiling and crying after setting a new 1A record in the 200 with a time of 25.58. For Unruh, the race marked her final sprint in a four-year run during which she never lost in either the 100- or 200-meter final at state.

“It����ap unreal,” said Unruh, an 11-time state champion who will run next year at the Colorado School of Mines. “I just started running track because I love the people, and these girls, they’re the reason I come out for track every year, to see these guys and run with them every year. Getting to win is just a bonus.”

She waited for the last 300 to make her move.

When there’s nothing in sight except open space, the feeling can be aimless. Disquieting.

The Heritage High School senior finds it far more comforting to stare down a target — a reminder of why she does this.

“For me,” Schwalm said, “it����ap mostly that I’m so competitive, and I love races.”

Her competitiveness has taken her to unpredictable places. After taking up singing as a hobby, she once applied to the Denver School of the Arts. Not because she wanted to enroll. “She just wanted to make it,” said her mom, Kara. “And check that box.” She did make it. That was enough.

It guided her to a late-blooming career as arguably the best high school distance runner in Colorado. She didn’t dream of cross-country stardom and Division I offers when she was younger. She didn’t spend hours training to become a state champ. She lived next to Heritage in Littleton and decided to wander into the cross-country team’s summer training program before her freshman year, motivated by memories of her endurance as a soccer midfielder and curious whether she was good enough to hang. Soon, she was running with the varsity girls.

“She would always come from dive practice to our workouts in the evening that summer,” her friend and teammate Caroline Fender said. “It was pretty funny how she wasn’t fully bought into it yet.”

“I don’t think this talent was at all something that I expected,” Schwalm said. Her surprise was only eclipsed by her parents’ — they never could’ve guessed she would fall in love with the sport.

On Thursday, her competitiveness dropped her into the final lap of the 3,200 with ground to make up. It was all part of the plan. Before the race, her mom had reminded her to breathe out there. High stakes could mean high anxiety. But Kara was practically hyperventilating from the pre-race nerves as she offered the advice. “She looked at me, like, you breathe.” This was Emry’s domain. She turned on the jets late and decisively pulled away from Cherokee Trail freshman Madison Lange, who won two titles at Adidas Track Nationals last summer.

Lange’s got next in CHSAA Class 5A, but this was Schwalm’s moment — a three-second victory at 10 minutes, 26.19 seconds. She was just as delighted to see Fender finish sixth.

“I think one of my strengths in racing is definitely once I hit a pace, being able to stay at that pace,” Schwalm said. “So for me, it was mostly just finding that front of the pack and following their lead. Taking whatever pace they were taking it at. Because then I knew that I wasn’t going to be (in a position) where I’m having to push my own pace. So for that last 300, that����ap where it came down to: This is my race now.”

It’s taking her to Wake Forest next. For most of her recruitment, she had the University of Alabama penciled in as her decision. But a weekend visit to Wake’s campus in Winston-Salem, N.C., last October sold her on the smaller school, which still competes in the ACC.

“First day we landed, she had to go do a run,” her dad, Eddie, recalled. “And she came back and was like, ‘That might’ve been the prettiest run I’ve ever done in my entire life.’ So that was a good start.”

By the time he picked her up from the dormitory where she was staying at 6 a.m. that Sunday morning — they had an early flight home — she didn’t even wait for him to ask what she thought of the place. “This is it,” she said. She committed the next day. She plans to major in kinesiology and exercise science.

“Seeing how the teammates interacted and the environment they created,” Schwalm said, “it was the most fun and supportive place I’ve ever been.”

There was unfinished business back home first. She finished fourth place in the 3,200 last year. As she accelerated down the final straightaway toward a triumphant ending to her Heritage career, her dad tried to sprint 200 meters down the concourse, alongside her.

“I was nervous I was gonna hit somebody,” Eddie said. “but I couldn’t help it.”

He ran honorably, but he couldn’t catch the ponytail in front of him.

In addition to the 26.2-mile marathon distance, there will be a half-marathon, 10-miler, and marathon relay. The half-marathon and 10-miler are sold out.

East Colfax Avenue will be closed between Colorado Boulevard and Garrison Street in Lakewood. Downtown, 17th Street and part of Larimer Street also will be closed. Street closures will be imposed from 5 a.m until 1 p.m., but some streets will reopen before then on a rolling basis.

“A 20-year milestone deserves a big celebration,” said Andrea Dowdy, chief executive of the Denver Colfax Marathon, in a news release. “There is so much excitement in the city right now, and we are grateful to our runners and our community for growing this tradition into Denver’s biggest running weekend of the year.”

They just have to get past Polis first.

Ninety-two of the Capitol’s 100 legislators voted for , which is now headed for an almost-certain veto by the term-limited governor. Among other things, the bill would require state employees who work as lobbyists for the governor and lieutenant governor to formally register with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office and disclose their positions on bills — just as private lobbyists are required to do.

The bill was proposed as a direct reaction to Polis. Some lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled General Assembly have wanted to bring the bill for years in response to the Democratic governor’s hands-on approach to the legislature, which has included frequent veto threats and direct lobbying to amend bills.

The measure would also require the legislative liaisons for state agencies to publicly disclose their positions on each bill they weigh in on.

“It was born out of frustration, a universal experience among most of us,” said Rep. Meg Froelich, an Englewood Democrat sponsoring the bill.

Polis’ efforts in the Capitol have been unusual, she and other lawmakers said. Previous governors — some of whom had split or opposing partisan control in the legislature — were not nearly as engaged in lawmaking as Polis has been. His office “has been known to pull people out of committees ahead of a vote, and there’s a lot of stuff happening 15 minutes, 20 minutes before you’re going into committee or a vote. So this is born from that experience, when you’re caught unawares,” Froelich said.

Private lobbying already holds significant sway over the legislature in the Capitol, where lobbyists often have more experience in the building than lawmakers themselves because of Colorado’s term limits. That effect is magnified with Polis, who can veto any bill he dislikes. To survive veto threats, lawmakers frequently rewrite or abandon bills altogether — .

This year alone, Polis’ opposition has prompted changes to legislation regulating 3D-printed guns and immigration enforcement. His veto threat also prompted lawmakers to kill that would’ve closed some corporate tax cuts and directed the new revenue to a tax credit for working families.

Froelich said that if Polis is known to oppose a bill, some lawmakers will shift their votes to align with him.

But that opposition is often not made public.

Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Fort Morgan Republican who’s also sponsoring the state lobbyists measure, said lawmakers were frustrated about being “played like a puppet.” She said the first floor — shorthand for Polis’ office, which is located on one level below the legislative chambers in the Capitol — had not always been transparent in its position on bills.

Sen. Lisa Cutter, a Jefferson County Democrat and another sponsor, said the proposal was ultimately about transparency. She recounted negotiations that helped shape bills, only for them still to meet a veto once Polis officially weighed in. She’s also faced criticism from constituents upset that a bill was watered down — but with no record revealing that changes were made at the behest of the governor.

“The governor, they talk about being coequal branches. And that’s technically true, but does anyone really think that we have as much power as the governor?” Cutter said. “…  And I think there’s the general feeling that this governor has weighed in a lot on policy, instead of being more of an executive branch.”

She said the bill was about “wanting to balance it out a little bit.”

Though Polis’ posture inspired SB-147, he’s unlikely to ever be subject to its requirements.

First, he will leave office early next year, before the next regular legislative session begins. Lawmakers said his departure gave them a chance for the legislature to reset its relationship with the first floor — and avoid letting Polis’ approach become the precedent for future governors.

The second reason is that Polis appears certain to veto the bill.

In a statement, spokesman Eric Maruyama said that the governor would be more open to SB-147 if lawmakers “held themselves to the same standards as defined in the bill.” (Because lawmakers vote, oftentimes repeatedly, on legislation, their positions are recorded publicly.)

“Staff members in the Governor’s office are not registered lobbyists, and it would be absurd to have them treated the same way when legislators are not,” Maruyama wrote in a statement. “The Governor’s Office always works with any legislators in good faith, most commonly in an informational capacity. This is a clear attempt to limit (future governors’) ability to meaningfully participate in the legislative process, and to curb the decision-making authority of any future governor.”

Polis’ office also provided a list characterizing how state legislatures elsewhere regulate lobbyists, arguing that SB-147 would put Colorado out of step with other states. Many of the states exempt government officials from lobby requirements.

Theoretically, the bill has enough legislative support to override a veto, but the clock is quickly running down on the legislative session. Had lawmakers acted more quickly, they could’ve passed SB-147 with enough time to override a veto before the session ends Wednesday night.

But the bill’s journey through the House went slowly — and the window to override a potential Polis veto before the session ended slammed shut.

The House’s top two Democratic leaders, Speaker Julie McCluskie and Majority Leader Monica Duran, were the only two House lawmakers to oppose the bill — and they also hold scheduling sway over legislation moving through their chamber.

Duran said she hadn’t factored the veto clock into her thinking and was focused on efficiently moving bills through the House.

“For me, just like right now, (it’s about) what’s coming out, what is ready — because we have six days left,” she said last week, citing the days then remaining. “So, I’m always looking at it through a different purview than that.”

She and McCluskie said they had concerns about SB-147’s impact on the Colorado Judicial Department. The measure would also have required more transparency around lobbyists for that agency.

Johnson said she’s unsure if she’ll bring the bill back next year, should Polis reject it. Froelich, who is term-limited and won’t return to the House in 2027, said some other lawmakers have discussed reviving the bill.

“Like I said, it����ap an opportunity to turn the page and have a different relationship,” she said. “A more transparent one.”

Four river events for kayaks, rafts and stand-up paddleboards have been moved from Gore Creek in Vail to river venues that are 35-60 miles away. Four other river events involving kayaks and rafts have been canceled. A fishing event also will be moved.

This year’s Mountain Games are scheduled June 4-7. The event, a major annual happening in the Vail Valley, dates back to 2002 when it was founded as a local whitewater festival known then as the Teva Mountain Games. In its current iteration it includes mountain and road cycling, running, climbing, yoga and disc events.

River events being moved will take place either at the Glenwood Whitewater Activity Area in Glenwood Springs, 60 miles from Vail, or the Upper Colorado River in Bond, 35 miles from Vail.

“Contingency planning is part of every Mountain Games, as water levels fluctuate from year to year, which is why our team has spent the last several months monitoring conditions and working to find solutions,” said Peggy Wolfe, operations director for the Vail Valley Foundation which organizes the event, in a news release. “We’re now putting that plan into action to ensure athletes and spectators have a safe and memorable experience.”

, which owns Matthews/Winters Park, acquired the for $7.3 million last week, with The Conservation Fund serving as a facilitator in the transaction. Great Outdoors Colorado contributed $2.3 million toward the purchase.

The acquisition expands Matthews/Winters Park, which already has nearly 14 miles of trails in the Morrison valley between 7,000-foot peaks to the west and the Dakota Ridge hogback to the east. Its trails are popular with hikers, trail runners and mountain bikers, and it borders Red Rocks Park, which is owned and managed by the city of Denver. Red Rocks Park has a trail network of more than 10 miles that connects with Matthews/Winter trails.

The Braun Ranch acquisition expands Matthews/Winters to the west, topping out at more than 1,000 feet over the Morrison Valley and offering a view that includes Mount Blue Sky, 35 miles to the west. Matthews/Winters Park has two parts, north and south of Red Rocks Park. Braun Ranch is expanding the northern part.

“Absolutely thrilled with the acquisition,” said Hillary Merritt, who manages land conservation for Jeffco Open Space. “It is such a great opportunity for us to connect two currently disconnected parts of the park, and it����ap really a beautiful property.”

The viewpoint at the top, with vistas to the west, north and east, is nearly as high as Lookout Mountain just to the north. The main trailhead for Matthews/Winters Park, located just south of the Interstate 70 Morrison exit, lies 800 feet below. The expansion area is also accessible from Red Rocks Park via the Red Rocks Trail, which connects to the Morrison Slide Trail within Matthews/Winters.

“You can be on the trails of Matthews/Winters that everybody knows and loves,” said Justin Spring, Colorado director for The Conservation Fund. “And, in the near future, have the chance to go further west and have more of a backcountry experience — really get away from the city.”

Spring said he and Merritt have been working on the acquisition for a year and a half. The Conservation Fund, a nonprofit, identifies at-risk landscapes to prevent them from falling into the hands of developers and facilitates their transfer from private ownership to public land agencies.

“We saw this property was for sale,” Spring said. “It����ap been on the market for a couple years. There were developers looking at it, and then interest rates went up. It created a remarkable window of time where it was too expensive to buy and hold and speculate as a developer. We were fortunate to stumble into it when it was at a better price point, and we brought it to our friends at Jefferson County.”

Great Outdoors Colorado accepted a grant application outside of its normal cycle of grant submissions in order to make the deal possible.

“We had to move quickly,” Spring said. “They agreed to accept a grant application out of cycle because they saw how timely and urgent this opportunity was.”

Matt Brady, a regional program officer for Great Outdoors Colorado, said preserving wildlife habitat was one of the reasons the agency was so supportive of the deal.

“This is obviously a migration corridor for elk and mule deer, so that is added benefit, especially in this foothills transition zone where there is rare connectivity at this scale,” Brady said. “There is strong development pressure in this part of the state, so it definitely checked the box in that sort of thinking.”

Great Outdoors Colorado was also mindful that Jeffco Open Space draws visitors from far beyond the county’s borders. Of its 27 parks, 24 are situated along or in the Front Range foothills, and Jeffco estimates that its parks attract 10 million visitors annually. Only one national park attracts more. Rocky Mountain National Park attracts just over 4 million visitors annually.

“The Matthews/Winters open space property is a highly trafficked trail system,” Brady said. “Jeffco is aware that they’re serving a population of recreationalists that is much broader than the county, with the millions of people that live and recreate on the Front Range.”

As of last Wednesday, Braun Ranch is officially part of Matthews/Winters Park. Jeffco plans to build at least one trail from the existing Morrison Slide Trail to the top of the expansion area. There is no timeline yet for construction.

“Siting a trail is going to be a little bit challenging,” Merritt said. “We certainly want to do an investigation of natural resources and make sure we are creating a sustainable trail, because it is quite steep. That will be part of the challenge. We’re hoping (to build) at least one trail that would get us from one side of Matthews/Winters to Mount Morrison. That would be in conjunction with Denver Mountain Parks, because that is their property, but we already have one trail that goes up the other side (from the south), and this might be a good opportunity to connect.”

, introduced Wednesday by a bipartisan trio of legislators, would create a new security administrator position within the legislature. It would task that person with fielding security concerns from legislators and acting as the General Assembly’s point person for safety issues.

Capitol security is now overseen by the Colorado State Patrol. While the bill would not alter the patrol’s duties in the building, the new security official would act as a liaison with the patrol while also monitoring threats and advising lawmakers on how to handle them.

The legislature recently received a grant from the National Conference of State Legislatures to help pay for security improvements for every lawmaker. The new security official would help advise on how best to use that funding, lawmakers said.

“It’s just an ability to have a tapped-in, day in, day out view of what����ap happening and to help coordinate those efforts,” said Rep. Chad Clifford, a Centennial Democrat sponsoring the bill. He also runs a home security company. “… This will be a person that has more daily dialogue and discussion” with lawmakers about security concerns.

The other main sponsors of the measure are Senate President James Coleman, a Denver Democrat, and Sen. Lisa Frizell, a Castle Rock Republican.

Lawmakers have been increasingly worried about their security in recent years, particularly on social media. Some lawmakers have filed restraining orders against people who’ve threatened them, and others say activists and political opponents have approached them at their homes.

After the Minnesota shootings last summer, state officials temporarily shut down a campaign finance database while 31 elected officials requested that the state redact their addresses from the website. In June, a gunman shot and killed Rep. Melissa Hortman, a Democrat who was a former House speaker, and her husband, Mark, at their home. Earlier that day, the same man and his wife at their home, but both survived.

Colorado House Speaker Julie McCluskie, who knew Hortman, has repeatedly spoken about security concerns, and the legislature’s executive committee organized a briefing on Capitol security in June, shortly after shootings.

Sen. Faith Winter, a Westminster Democrat who died in a car crash late last year, was on an extensive list of other lawmakers and public officials found in the Minnesota shooter’s car, McCluskie said in an interview Thursday.

“It����ap a ridiculous world we live in, when that����ap the reality for public servants,” said McCluskie, a Dillon representative who is entering the final weeks of her fourth term in the House. “Having a security officer for the General Assembly isn’t enough, but it����ap a start.”

But in the quest to improve lawmakers’ security, the bill would also reduce some public transparency.

HB-1422 would place elected officials in a special class of “protected persons” whose personal information cannot be published online. Under current state law, lawmakers must file annual disclosure statements that describe their finances, debts and property holdings, alongside financial information about their spouses. Candidates also must file affidavits that include addresses and contact information. (Two of the four legislators who have signed on to support HB-1422 have not filed a financial disclosure this year.)

Under , those documents are publicly filed on the secretary of state’s campaign finance website. That law also gave the secretary of state’s office the ability to redact a candidate’s address and other personal information.

If passed, HB-1422 will remove those records from the website and make them available upon request. Clifford said he wanted the records to be available only to certain people, like journalists, who would be unlikely to publish a lawmaker’s address or personal information.

Lawmakers — as well as other elected officials, like the governor — file the financial records to provide transparency on their economic interests, allowing the public to vet them for conflicts of interest. Since legislative districts were redrawn in 2022, the databases have also been used to determine if lawmakers live in the districts they seek to represent; Clifford says he’s done his own “sleuthing” on candidates using the information in the past.

He acknowledged that his bill would make those efforts more difficult.

“I hate that,” he said. “But I also don’t need you to be able to go find (a lawmaker’s) house real easy on a whim someday when somebody tells you that you should. … That is where we started getting concerned.”

Both McCluskie and Clifford raised concerns about the level of detail that must be included in the financial disclosures. McCluskie acknowledged the tension between increased threats to lawmakers and a need for those officials to be transparent.

She said legislators did accept a higher level of public scrutiny, given their positions, and that she previously had not minded that her address was available publicly.

“When it comes to my family, they haven’t been elected to office. They shouldn’t be exposed to the same level of scrutiny,” she said. “They shouldn’t be exposed to threats of violence that we’re seeing directed at elected officials. It����ap an extraordinarily challenging dynamic that we are facing in our society right now, and I was stricken the day that Melissa was shot.”

Jeff Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said in an email Thursday that his group’s governing board had not yet taken a position on the bill. But he noted that financial disclosures have only recently been published online.

“What����ap most important is that these records remain publicly available so that journalists and others can adequately background candidates for public office and look into whether candidates actually live in the districts they’re running in,” he wrote.

HB-1422 is scheduled for its first committee hearing Monday in the House’s . The legislative session is set to end May 13.

Lumumba Sayers Sr., 47, testified that he did not kill 28-year-old Malcolm Watson at a pool party for Watson’s son in Commerce City’s Pioneer Park on Aug. 10, 2024. Sayers Sr. is charged with first-degree murder, menacing and two counts of tampering with evidence in the slaying.

Prosecutors alleged that Sayers Sr. shot and killed Watson to avenge the death of his son, Lumumba Sayers Jr. — who was killed in a shootout in Five Points in 2023 — because Sayers Sr. believed Watson was connected to his son’s death.

Sayers Sr. testified Wednesday that he had no problem with Watson and that he did not shoot him.

“Me and Malcolm was cool,” he said. “He had nothing to do with my son.”

Sayers Sr. arrived at the park where Watson was killed at 4:55 p.m., then parked and walked toward Watson seconds before the man was shot five times. Surveillance video showed Sayers Sr. approach Watson, but did not capture the attack, which was just out of frame.

Multiple witnesses testified earlier in the trial that Sayers Sr. walked up to Watson and said, “What’s up, homie?”  Watson responded, “What’s up?” and then Sayers Sr. shot Watson multiple times from a close distance, witnesses said.

Sayers Sr. testified Wednesday that he addressed Watson with a nickname, saying, “What’s up, little PM?” and that Watson responded, “What’s up?” and then Sayers Sr. heard a third voice say, “What’s up (racial slur)?” immediately before the shots were fired.

“I heard the shots and I stumbled back, and he fell, and then I pulled my protection out of my pocket,” Sayers Sr. said, referring to his gun.

Sayers Sr. was unable to identify the third voice and said he did not see where the shots came from.

On cross-examination, Sayers Sr. admitted that he had not told any detectives about the third voice during the initial investigation, even though he had described greeting Watson, Watson’s response, and the sound of gunshots.

“You never mentioned there was a third person,” prosecutor Laura Anderson said.

“I just told them what was on my mind right then,” Sayers Sr. testified.

“And this third party was not on your mind right then?” Anderson asked.

“It was so — I just watched Malcolm get shot. I literally just watched this kid get shot. I literally had to live through that. I’m still processing the fact that this happened,” Sayers Sr. said.

Sayers Sr. testified he began carrying a gun after his son’s death because he was concerned for his own safety as he carried out anti-violence work through his Aurora organization, the . He was illegally carrying the gun in his pocket on the day of the killing without a concealed carry license, he acknowledged on the stand.

Sayers Sr.’s gun was never fired that day. Investigators believe Watson’s killer used an untraceable 3-D-printed or kit-built “ghost gun” to carry out the attack. That weapon has never been found.

Prosecutors allege Sayers Sr. shot Watson, then passed the gun to another man who left the crime scene with the weapon. Surveillance video shows the man running up to Sayers Sr. after the shooting, having a brief conversation with Sayers Sr. at his vehicle and then running away carrying what appears to be a covered-up object, testimony revealed.

Sayers Sr.’s defense attorney, Megan Downing, alleged that the other man shot Watson and ran away with the weapon. Earlier in the trial, she pointed to a bystander who, according to a police report, heard that other man shout, “I got you, (expletive)!” after the shooting.

On the stand, the bystander, who did not know anyone involved in the shooting, said she actually heard the man shout, “We got you, (expletive)!”

The other man was never charged with a crime in connection with the homicide. Detectives investigated him for potential charges related to tampering with evidence, but could not develop enough evidence to support charges, testimony at trial revealed.

On the stand Wednesday, Sayers Sr. also explained to jurors his actions after the killing.

Two witnesses testified that they saw Sayers Sr. attempt to rub an ammunition magazine on Watson’s hand after the shooting. Audell Thomas, who had two children with Watson and was standing beside him when he was killed, recorded Sayers Sr. kneeling over Watson’s body and rifling through his clothing moments after the attack.

Thomas got into a scuffle with Sayers Sr. when he tried to take the phone from her, she testified.

Sayers Sr. testified Wednesday that he rifled over Watson’s body because he was looking for a $15,000 gold necklace that Thomas grabbed from his neck during that scuffle. He testified he found the necklace under Watson’s hand and believed Thomas had planted it there.

Sayers Sr. also testified that he had no idea Thomas was recording him, even though she stood feet away and told him he was on video and that he was going to go to jail. He said he tried to take the phone from her because he mistakenly believed it was his own phone.

Earlier in the trial, Thomas offered surprise testimony that Sayers Sr. invoked his son’s name after the killing.

“I said, ‘You killed my baby dad,’ and he responded and said, ‘What about Lumumba?'” she testified during her cross-examination.

Thomas testified that she’d told investigators about that detail before the trial. But the lead detective on the case later testified that her statements in court were the first time she’d made that claim.

Sayers Sr.’s testimony will continue at 9:30 a.m. Thursday in Adams County District Court.

Manuel went after the dog in their Colorado Springs neighborhood. A stranger ran with him, trying to help, and when they reached the startled animal, the dog bit the stranger.

Law enforcement showed up. Manuel was given a court hearing for the dog bite.

The case was later dismissed. But when Manuel left the courthouse in September, he said two cars followed him. The 23-year-old stopped for gas and was quickly surrounded by federal agents from .

The undocumented immigrant, who had come with his parents from Mexico when he was 3 years old and had never been in trouble with the law before the dog bite, was detained in the state’s only immigration facility in Aurora for the next two months.

“It was not very pleasant,” he said. He spoke on condition that he only be identified by his middle name to speak candidly about his experiences with the federal government. “I’ve never been in trouble before. It really takes a toll on you mentally.”

As federal authorities pursue President Donald Trump’s goal of arresting and deporting millions of immigrants without legal status, they moved last summer to block longtime U.S. residents from requesting bail in immigration cases, and they have kept others, who would have been released under previous administrations, detained indefinitely.

Caught in that cycle, Manuel was only released after his attorneys filed — and a judge granted — a habeas petition in federal court.

Once a technically complicated legal rarity used to challenge improper incarcerations, habeas corpus petitions have become the predominant avenue for immigrants seeking release from detentions that increasingly end only with a deportation order.

With bail sharply curtailed and other avenues of release all but closed off, Colorado has seen an explosion of habeas cases: In the first 100 days of 2026, more than 370 detained immigrants have asked federal judges to either grant them bail hearings denied by ICE, or to release them altogether. The surge is an unprecedented increase from 2025’s total of 104 and 2024’s total of a bare dozen.

In his first 19 years as a lawyer, Denver immigration attorney Hans Meyer said he’d filed six habeas cases. In the past six months, his firm filed 60. When ICE first moved to withhold bail from a broad swath of detainees last summer, few people in detention were aware that filing habeas petitions was an option.

“The first three months, very few people understood the issue,” Meyer said. “For the next three months, people might know it was an option, but didn’t know much more. But now people in detention always go to habeas first.”

So significant is the crush that attorneys from the , which oversees ICE, have stepped in to help federal prosecutors deal with the cases. The highest-ranking federal prosecutor in the state, U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly, has also personally handled some of the petitions. It’s the only time this century that a U.S. attorney has made personal appearances on such cases, The Denver Post found.

The declined to comment for this story. Jeffrey Colwell, the clerk for the , confirmed The Post’s case data.

“It does put a significant burden on our judges and chambers,” he said. “It’s 300-plus cases that we haven’t historically seen.”

In an unsigned statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it abides by court orders and was unsurprised by the habeas surge, claiming “no lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States.”

Peering inside the ‘deportation machine’

Habeas petitions have been a part of American law since the nation’s founding, and they’ve been used in immigration proceedings in past years, too.

They’re used generally to challenge someone’s detention or incarceration, though not necessarily the underlying case that led to that confinement. Immigrants who are released or given bail hearings through habeas cases are still subject to deportation proceedings — like Manuel, whose immigration case remains underway.

But these petitions offer an avenue out of detention, and their prominence is surging, particularly as — which fall under the authority of the federal government — bend to the Trump administration’s goals.

The assumption that immigration courts can resolve detention questions “no longer holds,” the . Instead, immigration lawyers are taking their arguments out of immigration hearings and into federal court, where appointed judges can’t be removed on a whim. Indeed, they’ve shown a “striking willingness to intervene” in detention cases, the association wrote.

Because habeas cases are complicated — but the need for them is now enormous — immigration attorneys have also worked to train more lawyers on how to file them. Laura Lunn, of the , said she’s hosting a “massive training” at the end of April with the to bring non-immigration lawyers up to speed on writing and filing habeas petitions.

For this story, The Post reviewed scores of habeas petitions and hundreds of pages of court filings, along with publicly available arrest and court data detailing ICE practices. If the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is a “deportation machine,” as Meyer describes it, then the habeas petitions provide a glimpse into that machine’s inner workings. The filings describe both how immigrants end up in detention as well as the efforts that Trump officials have undertaken to keep them detained.

One man was arrested at an Ace Hardware. A Colombian father was arrested in Lakewood the same day he and his wife were set to close on a house. Several said they were arrested after they showed up for routine immigration check-ins at ICE offices in Colorado. A man from Guinea arrived at his case worker’s office to have his ankle monitor removed and found ICE agents waiting for him instead.

One man showed up for work at the , where he was directed to wait for a new ID badge in a side room, his lawyers later alleged. ICE agents came instead.

Upending nearly three decades of federal law, Manuel and many of those who’ve filed habeas petitions were denied bail during their detention proceedings. That about-face is the primary cause of the habeas crush: Since the mid-1990s, federal immigration authorities and the court system that oversees them would release immigrants who had no criminal record and were arrested within America’s interior.

Under the Trump administration, however, ICE and the courts have moved to keep those immigrants in custody, denying them bail under a separate federal law previously reserved for people arrested at the border.

The that ICE is now employing to block many immigrants from bail also requires mandatory detention — which attorneys argue is the point. Detention centers are like prisons, and 65% of immigrants arrested in Colorado over the past year have never been convicted of a crime. They’re likely not used to facilities like the one in Aurora, where the lights stay on at all times and the food, Manuel said, is often soggy or inedible.

Without access to bail, many detainees choose to leave: Aurora has seen a jump in deportation orders in the past year, including an unprecedented surge in immigrants asking for immediate removal.

Surging cases tied to size of Aurora facility

The increase in Colorado habeas filings is also partially driven by the size of the Aurora detention center, which can hold more than 1,500 people at any one time. It’s one of the largest facilities in the United States and attracts arrestees from across the country — meaning more people seeking release.

Attorneys for a Maryland man said he was arrested after ICE checked license plates in his neighborhood and discovered he had a “derogatory immigration history.” A teenager in New York, brought to the U.S. as a minor, was arrested after he got into a fender-bender in a snowstorm. Several men were arrested during traffic stops in Florida. All eventually were brought to the detention center in Aurora.

The filings detail myriad other ways the Trump administration has sought to keep immigrants detained.

When bail is granted, ICE appeals, prolonging detention for 90 more days. Some people with years-old removal orders have been re-arrested. For years, deportations could be indefinitely delayed if an immigrant successfully argued that they’d be tortured or persecuted if they were returned home. They would often be released and told to check in regularly with federal authorities.

Now, however, ICE will hold those individuals — who are often religious or political minorities, or members of the LGBTQ+ community — while they try to find another country to send them.

The Post reviewed more than a dozen habeas petitions filed in recent months by those immigrants detained in Colorado. Several detainees were transgender and feared they would be harmed or killed if they were returned home. One gay man from a country in North Africa was nearly deported to Cameroon, , before his habeas petition was granted.

If another country won’t take the detainees, then they languish in detention.

For those cases, as well as for detainees seeking bail, “habeas is the only way that most folks are getting out of detention, and more folks are being both arrested and held in detention than ever before,” said Shira Hereld, an attorney with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.

Indeed, immigration arrests in Colorado surged nearly 300% during Trump’s first year in office. The Aurora detention center has also flexed to its maximum capacity, and by the end of 2025, the facility regularly housed more than 1,400 people at a time.

Federal judges push back

As the flood of habeas petitions washed into federal courtrooms in Denver, judges have repeatedly rejected ICE’s effort to rewrite federal law and have ordered bail hearings or the immediate release of immigrants. They’ve also ordered the release of some people held indefinitely while ICE searches for a country to take them.

Of the more than 100 habeas petitions that have already been closed this year, a federal judge rejected only one, The Post found, while a few dozen more were duplicates or were dismissed voluntarily.

One attorney wrote to a Colorado judge that ICE’s position has been rejected more than 1,500 times nationwide. In their petitions, some attorneys have taken to listing the individual habeas cases that the Trump administration has lost, a tally that stretches over multiple pages.

In its unsigned statement, the Homeland Security Department said it was “applying the law as written. If an immigration judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period.”

In January, U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote that “the court has concluded, many times over,” that ICE’s interpretation was incorrect. In March, U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez granted another petition and wrote that she was “once more (joining) the chorus of courts in this district and around the nation that have overwhelmingly rejected (ICE’s) position.”

“Sometimes it is difficult to arrive at conclusions or resolve issues, due, perhaps, to an issue’s complexity, or the lack of guidance available to help resolve it,” U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney wrote in another case from January. “Neither circumstance is present here.”

Still, the lower-court rulings have not shifted ICE’s posture, and immigrants arrested in Colorado are still routinely denied bail.

A class-action lawsuit challenging the practice, filed by Meyer, the Denver immigration lawyer, and the , earned an initial favorable ruling but is now awaiting a higher court’s intervention. A judge in California struck down ICE’s new bail policy in December, but that ruling has also been held up as a higher court considers it. Another federal appeals court has backed the policy.

The regional rulings point to a prolonged legal battle.

“This is an alley knife fight,” Meyer said. “It’s going to play out circuit court by circuit court, and then end up at the Supreme Court.”

Until the Supreme Court weighs in, “we’re all running around like chickens with our heads cut off every day,” Lunn said, “because the law changes every day depending on which court rules. And we’re having to bring individual challenges for each and every client when the fundamental issue is these massive policies that impact everybody across the country.”

‘A dream that ended up becoming a nightmare’

In the meantime, the number of habeas cases filed in Colorado will only grow. For people like Javier Campos, it offers the only way out.

In July, ICE agents pulled Campos over in Aurora and arrested him. He spent nearly 100 days in the Aurora detention center before he was released last fall. He lost weight because the food was inedible, he said in an interview. He struggled with Bell’s palsy, a neurological condition that causes paralysis in facial muscles.

Through a translator, Campos described his experience in the immigration system as “disgraceful.” A citizen of Mexico, he’d been in the U.S. for 30 years. He worked in the construction industry. He had a wife, and four children who were U.S. citizens. In another time, detention would have been unlikely, and bail a given.

He was initially granted bail in August — $10,000, a sum far higher than what was typical in previous years, immigration lawyers said. Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security immediately appealed, blocking Campos’ release for three more months. That prompted the habeas filing.

He was finally released shortly before Thanksgiving, but his immigration case continues.

“A lot of the people would just give up their rights and leave because it gets really difficult to not have money to pay for an attorney,” Campos said. “A lot of people would just give up and leave and be deported. It was very sad seeing the things that went on there because a lot of guys came here for a dream that ended up becoming a nightmare — such a bad nightmare that it would cause stress and nightmares we couldn’t wake up from.”

Both men will appear on the June 30 primary ballot. Bottoms, who is one of the most conservative lawmakers in the state Capitol, won slightly more than 45% of the 2,145 ballots cast, comfortably beating Marx’s 39% and topping a field of more than a dozen candidates who vied for gubernatorial ballot access. When Marx’s total was announced and Bottoms’ victory assured, the lawmaker’s supporters shouted and jumped around him in the bleachers of Colorado State University-Pueblo’s arena.

“This is our year. This is the year we’re going to do this,” Bottoms, who is in his second term in the statehouse, said in brief remarks earlier Saturday. He promised to work with federal immigration authorities, to build nuclear reactors and to “reclaim safety and security.” He also pledged to “DOGE the mess out of everything in this state,” a reference to billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which gutted a number of federal programs last year.

State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, who also is running for governor, did not participate in the assembly process and has instead submitted signatures to appear on the primary ballot. Marx also submitted signatures while also seeking the assembly nomination.

The party also nominated state Sen. Mark Baisley for U.S. Senate, former Colorado Libertarian Party official James Wiley for secretary of state, and Fremont County Commissioner Kevin Grantham for state treasurer. All those candidates will be appear on the ballot alone in June, virtually assuring them places on the November general election ballot.

For attorney general, the assembly sent Michael Allen, the district attorney in El Paso County, and attorney David Willson to the primary election in June.

The day was marred by delays, mistakes, long lines and, as afternoon turned into evening, a voting discrepency: About 80 more ballots had been cast than delegates had been credentialed to cast them. The assembly then voted to accept the new ballots as legitimate (the official running the meeting said they likely were).

The winner of the June gubernatorial primary will face off against U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet or Attorney General Phil Weiser, each of whom are seeking the Democratic nomination to replace Gov. Jared Polis next year.

The Republican candidates who emerge from the primaries will face a Colorado Democratic Party that has held all four constitutional statewide offices since 2018. No Republican has won the governor’s office since 2002, and the last statewide win for a GOP candidate was Heidi Ganahl’s win for a University of Colorado governing board seat in 2016.

Repubican contenders repeatedly promised to reverse those trends Saturday. Eighteen gubernatorial candidates initially were slated to speak, although several didn’t turn up and their candidacies did not advance. One candidate — Kelvin “K-Man” Wimberly — appeared to have no supporters present to nominate him. That prompted someone from the crowd to run up to the microphone, gesture to Wimberly and offer to nominate “this guy.”

As party members slowly trickled into the building Saturday morning, campaign volunteers wandered, handing out bags with posters for Marx or walking in slow arcs with signs for fellow chief executive hopeful Robert Moore. Scott Pond, who hopes to take on U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper in November, signed a pair of baseball caps for one supporter. Many attendees — including the conspiratorial podcaster Joe Oltmann — wore “Free Tina Peters” stickers, a sentiment echoed by a banner hanging behind the assembly stage.

Several candidates, including Marx, pledged to free the former Mesa County clerk, who was convicted for orchestrating a plot to sneak a third party into a secure area to examine voting equipment after the 2020 election.

Oltmann briefly ran for governor before declaring his candidacy to become the state GOP’s chairman.

On Friday, former state lawmaker Ron Hanks was nominated to launch a right-wing primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, the freshman Republican who represents the Western Slope’s 3rd Congressional District. Hurd’s previous primary opponent, Hope Scheppelman, dropped out of the contest last month, after President Donald Trump re-endorsed Hurd.