, 35, also was arrested on suspicion of tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse, the Thornton Police Department said Tuesday.

Thornton police were called to the home in the 1900 block of West 101st Avenue on Thursday afternoon to check on Debra Lynn Thompson after her boyfriend, who lives out of state, called law enforcement because he hadn’t been able to get in touch with her.

Officers told him they did not have a legal reason to enter the home forcibly, according to the affidavit. One of Thompson’s sons again called 911 on Friday morning because he had not heard from her in several days and told police that they normally talked every day and she had severe health issues.

Police again said they could not enter the home. Thompson’s son then hired a locksmith to open the deadbolt, which is when the locksmith told him it seemed someone inside was trying to stop the deadbolt from opening, according to the affidavit.

Thornton officers entered the home at 10:40 a.m. and found a sofa table was barricading the front door. As they searched the house, the locksmith told police he saw a man running from the property with a large gun.

Thompson’s body was found in a garbage can that was hidden in the corner of the garage, covered in a fabric grill cover and stacked with boxes.

Her body and head had significant trauma, and there were large amounts of blood on the garage floor and spattered on the walls, according to the affidavit. It appeared she had died one or two days before.

Investigators also found bloody fragments of a wood hockey stick at the scene and matching wood fragments in Thompson’s hair.

Her exact cause of death is still being determined, police wrote.

Family members told police that Pittman, who lived with his mother, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had a history of violent behavior when not medicated.

Pittman turned himself in to police on Monday and is being held without bail at the Adams County jail, according to court records. He is set to appear in court Friday for a filing of charges hearing.

Pittman is being represented by the state public defender’s office, which does not comment on criminal cases.

Officers went to the at 10:30 a.m. Friday to check on a woman who had not been seen or heard from in several days, the agency said in a news release.

Officers found her body when they entered the home, department leaders said. No one else was in the home, and the woman was likely killed between 9 p.m. Wednesday and Friday morning.

Thornton police did not give any additional information about the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death but said detectives are conducting interviews and following leads to develop information in the case. The woman’s name will be released by the Adams County coroner’s office.

Anyone with information about the case can contact the Thornton Police Department tip line at 720-977-5069.

Thornton Police Department officers responded to a 911 call about a person bleeding near East 88th Avenue and Grant Street just before 11 p.m. on March 25. The 29-year-old man was taken to the hospital and later died, and investigators determined he was injured in a stabbing, agency officials said Friday.

Zamien Rivas was arrested Thursday and booked into the Adams County Jail, according to the department.

This is a developing story.

Thornton officers responded to reports of someone bleeding near East 88th Avenue and Grant Street just before 11 p.m. Wednesday, according to a .

When officers arrived, they found an injured man on the ground, police said. Paramedics took the 29-year-old man to the hospital, where he later died. He will be identified by the Adams County Coroner’s Office.

The nature of the man’s injuries are still under investigation, spokesperson Kylynn McTague said.

As of Thursday morning, no suspects in the man’s death had been publicly identified or arrested. Investigators were interviewing witnesses to gather information about potential suspects, police said.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the Thornton Police Department’s tip line at 720-977-5069.

David Preston Chambers is charged with two counts of child sex assault while providing daycare services at in the 4200 block of East 114th Avenue throughout 2025, according to court records and the Thornton Police Department.

Chambers is married to a licensed home daycare provider, who operated the now-closed daycare at several locations in Thornton for more than 40 years, police said in a news release.

Detectives believe there may be additional victims in the case, and anyone with information about the case can contact the tip line at 720-977-5069.

Chambers was released from the Adams County Jail on Sunday on a $20,000 bail. He is set to appear in court on March 31 for a preliminary hearing.

More than 100 firefighters from across the metro area responded to a grass fire that sparked at 11:30 a.m. near Pinnacle Charter High School, 8412 Huron St. in Thornton.

The fire burned across 10 acres of dry, grassy fields and charred vehicles as it produced billows of black smoke visible across the Denver area. Smoke reduced visibility on Interstate 25 to the point that state transportation officials closed the highway in both directions for more than an hour.

Four firefighters and one other person were injured by the fire, Thornton Fire Chief Stephen Kelley said at a briefing at City Hall. Their injuries did not appear to be life-threatening, but no further information on the nature or severity of the injuries was available, Kelley said.

Police officers went door to door Wednesday afternoon to evacuate people after the fire started, and city officials sent out evacuation notices through the statewide , Kelley said. Pinnacle Charter High School and several nearby businesses also were evacuated.

Thornton is in the process of switching to a different city emergency alert system and does not have one in place currently, Kelley said.

City leaders could not say how many homes were evacuated and did not provide a map of affected neighborhoods, although officials confirmed most evacuations occurred northeast of the fire.

Flames burned for more than two hours before fire crews gained full containment at 2:07 p.m. Thornton officials lifted evacuations at 3:30 p.m. Kelley said firefighters were to remain in the area overnight to put out hot spots and prevent the fire from rekindling. Continued road closures were likely because of firefighting activity, he said.

No homes were destroyed by the fire, which started on a greenbelt between a residential neighborhood and businesses, Kelley said. The cause of the fire is under investigation and crews are evaluating fire damage to businesses. Although none of the businesses’ buildings appear to be damaged, rows of cars in nearby lots were burned.

“It is our intent to get ahead of these fires so we don’t have the spread … experienced during the Marshall fire,” Kelley said. “I think we’re very fortunate today that we did not have an outcome similar.”

High winds fueled the fire’s “rapid spread” as most of the Front Range and Eastern Plains remained under a red flag warning, Kelley said.

“These are conditions that we continue to face on a daily basis here on the Front Range,” he said.

More than 3,000 Xcel Energy customers lost power because of the fire on Wednesday afternoon, but most outages were resolved by the evening, .

A second wildfire charred at least an estimated 3,500 acres of grassland in Logan County on Wednesday afternoon, threatening the small town of Padroni and forcing the population of about two dozen residents to evacuate.

The fire was started by a crash on Colorado 113 near Logan County Road 66 at 1:20 p.m. and spread quickly as wind gusts reached 50 mph, emergency officials said.

Logan County officials ordered evacuations between County Road 66 south to Colorado 138 and Colorado 113 east to County Road 65, including Padroni, Peetz, Iliff and the Caliche School.

Fire crews gained 80% containment as of 4:26 p.m., allowing county officials to lift evacuation orders, emergency management officials said on .

State and local agencies responded to fight the fire, including two air tankers and several farmers with tractors. No damage to structures or injuries to people or livestock was reported, Logan County officials said.

Wind-related problems extended to the skies Wednesday, when the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a ground delay at Denver International Airport because of the weather, delaying nearly 900 flights as gusts peaked at 55 mph.

United Airlines reported 316 delays and four cancellations as of Wednesday night. Southwest had 254 delays, and SkyWest had 218 delays and one canceled flight, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

High winds may continue to plague Colorado through Friday, although forecasters are not confident about what the next few days will bring, Wednesday night.

Uncertain wind conditions and borderline low humidity levels are enough for forecasters to continue a fire weather watch for communities along the I-25 corridor and the Eastern Plains, forecasters wrote.

A watch means conditions are “favorable for rapid fire spread,” and people should avoid outdoor burning or any activity that produces a spark, according to the agency.

One of the Thornton officers is believed to have been bitten by the man and run over during the incident, according to a .

Officers spotted a “suspicious vehicle” with no license plates parked at a gas station near West 88th Avenue and Huron Street just after 2 a.m. on Feb. 3, police said in the release.

The driver, 27-year-old Wesley Norton, gave fake identification to the officers and was asked to exit the vehicle, according to the release. He ignored police commands to stop, started the car and drove away, dragging the two officers for several yards.

One officer suffered minor injuries, and the second, the one believed to have been hit and bitten, suffered “significant” injuries, police said.

Police identified Norton as the driver two days later and arrested him. He was charged Wednesday in Adams County District Court with second-degree assault on a peace officer, two counts of third-degree assault on a first-responder, obstructing a peace officer, false reporting of identifying information to law enforcement and reckless driving, according to court records.

Norton is being held on a $20,000 cash or surety bail and will next appear in court on March 10 for a preliminary hearing, court records show.

But , mounted to poles at intersections throughout this city of nearly 150,000, brought out dozens of people to the Thornton Community Center for a discussion on how the controversial license plate-reading cameras are being used — and whether they should be used at all.

Law enforcement agencies cite the automatic license-plate readers, or ALPRs, as a powerful tool that bolsters their ability to locate and stop suspects who may be on their way to committing their next assault or robbery.

But Meg Moore, a six-year resident of the city who is helping spearhead opposition to Flock cameras, said she worries about how the rapidly spreading surveillance system is impacting residents’ privacy and Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Thornton’s Flock camera data can be seen by more than 1,600 other law enforcement agencies across the country.

“We want to make sure this is truly safe and effective,” she said in an interview.

The debate over Atlanta-based Flock Safety’s cameras, which not only can record license plate numbers but can search for the specific characteristics of a vehicle linked to an alleged crime, has been picking up steam in recent years. The discussions in recent months, but this year they reached the state Capitol, where lawmakers are pitching a couple of bills to tighten up rules around surveillance.

The number of police agencies , according to the company. The critical “DeFlock” website uses crowdsourcing to tally the number of Flock cameras out there. At the latest count, the website lists nearly .

Metro Denver alone is home to hundreds of the cameras, .

In Denver, Mayor Mike Johnston has been butting heads with the City Council over the issue. Johnston is so convinced of Flock’s value in combating crime that in October, he extended the contract with the company against the wishes of much of the council. Denver has 111 Flock cameras.

In Longmont, elected leaders . Its City Council voted in December to pause all sharing of Flock Safety data with other municipalities, declined an expansion of its contract with the company and began searching for an alternative.

Louisville beat its Boulder County neighbor to the punch by several months, disabling its Flock cameras at the end of June and removing them by the start of October. City spokesman Derek Cosson said privacy concerns from residents largely drove the city’s decision.

Steve Mathias, a Thornton resident for nearly a decade, would like to see Flock’s cameras gone from his city. Short of that, he said, reliable controls on how the streetside data is collected, stored and shared are paramount.

“In our rush to make our community safe, we’re not getting the full picture of the risks we’re facing,” he said. “We’re making ourselves safe in some ways by making ourselves less safe in others.”

The hot-button debate in Thornton played out at last month’s community meeting and continued at a City Council meeting last week, where the city’s Police Department gave a presentation on the Flock system.

Cmdr. Chad Parker laid out several examples of Flock’s cameras being instrumental in apprehending bad actors — in cases ranging from homicide to sex assault to child exploitation to a $5,700 theft at a Nike store.

As recently as Monday, Thornton police that investigators had tracked down a man suspected of hitting and killing a 14-year-old boy who was riding a small motorized bike over the weekend. The agency said a Flock camera in Thornton gave officers a “strong lead” in identifying the hit-and-run suspect within 24 hours.

At the Feb. 3 council study session, police Chief Jim Baird described Flock’s camera system as “one of the best tools I’ve seen in 32 years of law enforcement.”

But that doesn’t sway those in Thornton who are wary of the camera network.

“I’m not a fan of building toward a surveillance state,” Mathias said.

The hazards of a system like Flock, he said, lie not just in the pervasive data-collection methods the company uses but also in who eventually might get to see and use that data — be it a rogue law enforcement officer or .

“A person who wants us to do us harm with this system will have as much capability as the police have to do good,” he said.

Crime-fighting tool or prone to misuse?

In November, a Columbine Valley police officer was disciplined after he accused a Denver woman of theft based in large part on evidence from Flock cameras, according to . The officer mistakenly claimed the woman had stolen a $25 package in a nearby town and said he’d used Flock cameras to track her car.

“It’s putting too much trust in the hands of people who don’t know what they’re doing,” DeFlock’s Will Freeman said of so many police agencies’ adoption of the technology.

Last summer, that the Loveland Police Department had shared access to its Flock camera system with U.S. Border Patrol. That came two months after the station reported that the department access to its account, which ATF agents then used to conduct searches for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Parker, the Thornton police commander, said any searches connected to immigration cases or to women from out of state who are seeking an abortion in Colorado — another scenario that’s been raised — “won’t ever touch our system.” State laws restrict cooperation with federal immigration authorities and with other states’ abortion-related investigations.

“Any situation I feel uncomfortable about or that might be in conflict with our policies or with Colorado law, I will revoke their access — no problem,” he said.

Thornton deputy city attorney Adam Stephens said motorists’ Fourth Amendment rights are not being violated by the city’s Flock camera network. During last week’s meeting, he cited several recent court cases that, in essence, determined that there is no right to privacy while driving down a public roadway.

In an interview, Stephens said Thornton was “in compliance with the law.”

Flock spokesman Paris Lewbel wrote in an email that the company was “proud to partner with the Thornton Police Department to provide technology used to investigate and solve crimes and to help locate missing persons.”

Lewbel provided links to two news stories about minor children who were abducted and then found with the help of Flock’s cameras in Thornton and elsewhere.

At the council’s study session last week, Parker provided more examples of Flock’s role in fighting crime and finding missing people in Thornton. They included police nabbing a suspect who had hit and killed a pedestrian, locating a burglar who was suspected of robbing several dispensaries, and tracking down an 89-year-old man with dementia who had gotten into his car and gotten lost.

“It allows us to find vehicles in a manner we weren’t able to previously,” Parker said of the camera network.

Thornton installed its first 10 Flock cameras in 2022 and then added five more — plus a mobile unit — two years later. The initial deployment was in response to a spike in auto thefts in the city, which peaked at 1,205 in 2022 (amid an overall surge in Colorado). Thornton recorded 536 auto thefts last year.

The city says Flock cameras have been involved in 200 cases that resulted in an arrest or a warrant application in Thornton over the last three years.

Thornton police have access to nearly 2,200 other agencies’ Flock systems across the United States, while nearly 1,650 law enforcement agencies can access Thornton’s Flock data, according to data provided by the city.

For Anaya Robinson, the public policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, the networked nature of Flock cameras across wide geographies is a big part of the problem. By linking one police agency’s Flock technology with that of thousands of other police departments, it “creates a surveillance environment that could violate the Fourth Amendment.”

The sweeping nature of Flock’s surveillance is also worrisome, Robinson said.

“You’re not just collecting the data of vehicles that ping (a police department’s) hot list (of suspicious vehicles), you’re collecting the data of every vehicle that is caught on a Flock camera,” he said.

And because the technology is relatively inexpensive — Thornton pays $48,500 to Flock annually for its system — it’s an affordable crime-fighting tool for most communities. But that doesn’t mean it should be deployed, DeFlock’s Freeman said.

Fight remains a largely local one

State lawmakers are crafting bills this session to limit the reach of surveillance technologies like Flock’s.

would put limits on access to databases and the sharing of information. It would prohibit a government from accessing a database that reveals an individual’s or a vehicle’s historical location information, and it would prohibit sharing that information with third parties or with government agencies outside the controlling entity’s jurisdiction. Certain exceptions would apply.

would direct a “law enforcement agency to use surveillance technology only for lawful purposes directly related to public safety or for an active investigation.” It also would forbid the use of facial-recognition technology without a warrant and would place limits on the amount of time data can be retained.

Both bills await their first committee hearings.

Thornton says it doesn’t use facial recognition technology. Its Flock data is retained for 30 days.

Regardless of what passes at the state Capitol, the real fight over license plate readers of any type will likely continue to happen at the local level. Thornton’s council plans further discussions on Flock next month.

For Moore, the resident who is leading the charge against the cameras, potential surveillance of the immigrant community is what troubles her the most.

“We want to make sure we’re operating this so that it’s safe for all of our residents,” she said. “Getting rid of the cameras altogether is a tough sell. But there needs to be a conversation about guardrails.”

Mayor Pro Tem Roberta Ayala, a Thornton native, said she has heard a wide array of opinions from her constituents about the advantages and potential downsides of the technology.

“Could it be misused? Yes. Do we want to stop that? Yes,” she said.

But as a victim of crime herself, Ayala also knows the immense damage and disruption that crime causes victims and their families, be it a stolen vehicle or something much worse. And as a teacher, Ayala is concerned about achieving justice for the families of children who are harmed or abused.

“If it can save even five kids,” she said, “I want the cameras.”

Nobles could face charges of careless driving causing serious bodily injury or death and failure to remain at the scene of a crash involving death, Thornton police .

The victim’s uncle, in an interview with The Denver Post on Monday, identified the teenager as Jayden Marrujo of Westminster.

“He was a kind, generous kid willing to lend a hand to people and all his friends,” Elliot Benally, 35, said of Marrujo, who he helped raise as a son since he was 3 or 4 years old. “He loved to play football.”

Benally posted about his nephew in a , writing that “Jayden’s kindness, generosity and joyful spirit touched the lives of so many, and his absence leaves a profound void in our hearts.”

The crash occurred just before 9:45 p.m. near Huron Street and West Thornton Parkway on Saturday, according to police. The victim was riding a small motorized bike north on Huron Street when he was hit from behind near the intersection. The suspect vehicle, a 2013 BMW 328i, fled the scene without stopping, police said.

Paramedics took the teenager to the hospital, where he later died from his injuries.

Benally said he was getting ready for bed around 11 p.m. Saturday when police showed up at his house.

“I thought he was in trouble because there were five cops and a detective at my door,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

His nephew, he said, was on his motorized bike going to visit a friend when he was struck. Benally then broke down, remembering the Northglenn High School freshman who lived with him and Benally’s mother in Westminster.

“I would always see him playing football with a smile on his face,” he said.

Thornton police said they were able to develop a “strong lead” resulting in the arrest using a Flock Safety license plate reader, which is a camera that records the identifying information of passing vehicles. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation used the data from the Flock camera to issue a Medina Alert for the suspect vehicle.

After the alert was issued, investigators were able to make phone contact with Nobles. He told officers his car was in Northglenn and he was arrested shortly thereafter and taken to the Adams County Jail, Thornton police said in an X post Monday.

Over the weekend, Thornton Police Chief Jim Baird issued a statement about the alleged hit-and-run collision, saying “our hearts go out to the family and loved ones affected by this tragic crash.”

Thornton officers responded to the fatal crash near Huron Street and West Thornton Parkway just before 9:45 p.m. Saturday, according to a from the agency.

A 14-year-old boy riding a small motorized bike north on Huron Street was hit from behind near the intersection, police said. The suspect vehicle, a 2013 BMW 328i, then fled the scene without stopping, according to the release.

Paramedics took the teenager to the hospital, where he later died from his injuries. The Adams County Coroner’s Office will identify the 14-year-old at a later date.

The for the car on Sunday morning. That alert was in the process of being canceled at 1:33 p.m. Sunday, after police found the car and took the driver into custody.

The driver had not been publicly identified as of Sunday afternoon, and police did not specify what charges he was arrested on investigation of.

License plate cameras helped officers identify the suspect vehicle after the crash, police said.

This is a developing story and may be updated.