Applejack Wine & Spirits, a staple of the Denver area since the 1960s, has been sold to ABC Fine Wine & Spirits in Orlando, Florida.
ABC, one of the country’s largest family-owned and operated alcohol beverage retailers, announced the purchase Friday. The company said in a statement that the sale marks its first out-of-state acquisition in 90 years and is the start of plans to expand nationwide.
“This is a milestone in ABC’s history and a major step toward our overall expansion plans,” said Charles Bailes III, ABC chairman and CEO. “Applejack has an exceptional reputation in the industry and is an iconic beverage retailer in Colorado.”
Applejack was founded in 1961 in Wheat Ridge. It also has stores in Thornton and Colorado Springs.
Former Applejack CEO and owner Jim Shpall said he has known Bailes for about 30 years and called ABC “great, great operators.”
Shpall said Herb Becker was Applejack’s original owner. The store opened in the Applewood shopping center in Wheat Ridge. At that time, Interstate 70 didn’t reach past Wadsworth Boulevard or Kipling Street, Sphall said.
Alan Freis, Shpall’s father-in-law, bought the business in 1980.
“I had been practicing law. An opportunity arose to go into the business and I started at Applejack in 1994,” Shpall said. “Effectively, until just now, in 65 years of history, it has been run by just three people.”
The first Applejack store is in the same shopping center where it started, but has grown in size through the years. The site at 3320 Youngfield St. is approximately 40,000 square feet.
And the well-known Applejack sign in front of the store has been in place since around 1962, Shpall said.
The three Colorado stores will operate as Applejack by ABC.
Shpall said the companies haven’t disclosed the sales price.
ABC Fine Wine & Spirits started from a single downtown Orlando storefront in 1936. The retailer, privately owned and run, has grown to more than 125 locations across Florida.
ABC said it plans to remodel the Applejack stores and add walk-in humidors in the first six months.
An Aurora pedestrian died Saturday night after being hit by a car while crossing the street, police said.
The pedestrian, a 43-year-old man who has not been publicly identified, was walking west across Peoria Street at East Colfax Avenue outside of the crosswalk when he was hit, according to a news release from the Aurora Police Department. The crash happened just before 11 p.m. Saturday.
He was also crossing against the traffic signal, police said. The white Ford SUV that hit the man while driving south on Peoria Street had a green light.
Paramedics took the man to the hospital, where he later died, police said. He will be identified by the Adams County Coroner’s Office.
Speed and alcohol are not believed to be factors in the crash, according to the Aurora Police Department.
As of Sunday evening, no charges were expected to be filed in the crash “unless additional details are obtained through the investigation and/or reconstruction of the scene,” police said.
Two people were injured early Saturday morning when flames engulfed a motorhome in Adams County, according to the fire department.
Firefighters responded to reports of a grass fire in the 2900 block of E. 78th Avenue at 6:20 a.m. Saturday, according to Adams County Fire Rescue. When crews arrived, they found a motorhome on fire.
A video posted by the fire department shows a destroyed vehicle, with flames continuing to burn items inside. Firefighters pried part of the home open with an axe to douse the inside with water, the video shows.
Adams County firefighters responded to a second mobile home fire just after 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the 6800 block of Ruth Way, according to the department.
No injuries were reported, but crews rescued five puppies from the burning structure, fire officials said.
One person died and several others were injured in an early Sunday morning crash on U.S. 85 in Brighton, police said.
The crash happened at about 12:30 a.m. Sunday, near the intersection of U.S. 85 and Weld County Road 2.5, according to a news release from the Brighton Police Department.
A Ford SUV driving westbound on the county road ran a stop sign and was hit by a GMC SUV traveling northbound on U.S. 85, police said in the release.
Two people inside the Ford were ejected, and two others fled the scene on foot, police said.
One of the people ejected from the Ford died at the scene of the crash, and paramedics took the other to the hospital with serious injuries, according to the release. Paramedics also took an unspecified number of GMC passengers to hospitals.
Investigators believe the victim killed in the crash, who has not been publicly identified, may have been hit by a third vehicle on the highway. The unidentified driver left the scene of the crash, police said.
The victim will be identified by the Weld County Coroner’s Office at a later date.
Brighton police found the two Ford occupants who fled the scene on foot shortly after they ran, according to the release. One was taken to the hospital with unknown injuries.
The other, 20-year-old Erik Diaz Olivas, was arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide, DUI, reckless endangerment, failing to display proof of insurance, driving on a revoked license, leaving the scene of an accident, vehicular assault, failing to obey a traffic control device and possessing alcohol as a minor, police said.
Anyone with information on the crash is asked to contact investigators at 303-655-8740.
After a pleasant days-long stretch of warm weather often eclipsing the 70-degree mark, northern Colorado and metro Denver will see quite a change in conditions starting Friday night.
Instead of breaking records for heat, temperatures will drop substantially and snow will begin falling in the far northern mountains tonight, spreading southward into the Interstate 70 mountain corridor and Summit County by late Saturday afternoon.
By late Saturday night, the National Weather Service predicts areas of snow to develop along the Interstate 25 corridor and along the adjoining eastern plains, with travel impacts continuing into Sunday morning. Some of those areas of snow could start out as rain earlier Saturday evening before turning to snow.
Just how severe those travel impacts will be in metro Denver are still in question.
“There is considerable uncertainty with regard to the amount of snow, since we anticipate bands of snow,” according to a weather service bulletin issued Friday afternoon for the metro area. “Thus, some areas may receive very little or no snow, while others get a few inches.”
Higher amounts of snow are assured for some of Colorado’s northern mountains, with the National Weather Service forecasting around 10 inches for Winter Park, 5 inches for Breckenridge and half a foot of the white stuff for Keystone. The predicted weekend snowfall for some of Colorado’s snow-starved ski resorts will come as welcome news to an industry that has seen a decidedly dry start to the season.
Meteorologists are calling for a low of 20 degrees Saturday night, a low of 14 degrees Sunday night and a low of 21 degrees Monday night in the metro area. But by Tuesday and towards New Year’s Day, temperatures will top out in the 40s and 50s with little precipitation expected.
Two men face multiple felony drug charges following searches of Adams County apartments and the seizure of what authorities said were an estimated 67,000 fentanyl pills, 521 grams of methamphetamine, 45 grams heroin and 667 grams of cocaine.
Oscar Serrano Romano and Enrique Delgadillo Ruiz were arrested Dec. 18.
As part of the investigation, the Northern Colorado Drug Task Force and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Front Range Task Force executed search warrants for apartments in Thornton, Aurora and Westminster. During the search of the Thornton apartment, officers found several duffel bags containing bundled packages of suspected methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl, according to an affidavit from the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
Officers reported finding bags they believed were being used to distribute drugs. They also found a parking pass for an apartment in Thornton where Ruiz was staying, according to the affidavit.
Investigators obtained a search warrant for the second apartment on Dec. 18. They said they found a duffel bag containing suspected counterfeit fentanyl pills, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. Officers also found clear bags of suspected cocaine, an undetermined amount of money and a notebook that appeared to be handwritten daily logs of drug sales.
Before searching the apartment, officers arrested Romano on a traffic stop after he left the building and got in his car. Officers said they found a white, powdery substance in his car’s console. Ruiz was stopped and arrested while driving away a few minutes later.
Both suspects face charges that include possession with intent to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance and conspiracy to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance.
The pair scheduled to appear Tuesday afternoon in Adams County District Court.
Northglenn police said Monday that a man their officers shot Friday night near a mall had pointed a gun at them while fleeing.
At about 9:15 p.m. Friday, police responded to a call about a suspicious person near Northglenn Marketplace. A man fled on foot and pointed a gun at officers during the pursuit, the department said. The shooting happened on the south side of the mall, near W. 104th Avenue and Bannock Street.
Police haven’t released any information about the man’s identity or condition, other than that an ambulance took him to a local hospital and his injuries don’t appear likely to be fatal.
The 17th Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team is investigating the shooting.
A man was shot and injured Friday night by Northglenn officers responding to reports of a suspicious person, according to the police department.
Northglenn officers were on patrol near the Northglenn Marketplace, 10578 West 104th Avenue, at about 9:15 p.m. Friday when they received the call about a suspicious person in the area, according to a news release from the police department.
The shooting happened on the south side of the mall, near W. 104th Avenue and Bannock Street, police said.
When officers found the man, he fled on foot and was shot by an unknown number of officers, police said. It’s unclear how many times the man, who has not been publicly identified, was shot.
Paramedics took him to the hospital, where he is expected to survive, police said. No officers were injured.
Additional information about the shooting and the events leading up to it was not available Sunday morning.
During Thanksgiving dinner in 2024 — just months after her long-term boyfriend died by suicide — Amanda Killam broke down sobbing, remembering how much he enjoyed the traditional feast and mourning that he wasn’t there to share it.
This year, she cried the night before Thanksgiving, but was able to get a bit of enjoyment over dinner with family and friends. Instead of overwhelmingly painful, it was bittersweet, sharing a good meal and company while still wishing her partner were by her side.
“It doesn’t get easier, but it gets softer. The pain gets softer,” said Killam, of Commerce City.
While grieving a loved one is hard regardless of how they died, people who lost someone to suicide face unique challenges, dealing not only with sadness, but also with anger, feelings of abandonment, the sense of being blamed by others, or guilt that they didn’t know the deceased was suffering.
Professional help and support from people who’ve been through the same thing can help work through those feelings and rebuild a life, survivors said.
Killam’s partner, Rob Nickels, died by suicide at 42. She knew about his history of health problems, including a stroke in his 20s and two kidney transplants, but he never talked about the extent of his mental suffering.
Nickels had texted about his intent to die while Killam was getting ready to fly home from Dallas. She called and attempted to talk him down, then notified friends and family in Denver to call 911 after hearing sounds suggesting he’d begun an attempt. She also called businesses near their apartment in the hope someone could get there fast enough to intervene.
First responders attempted to resuscitate Nickels, but he died shortly before Killam’s plane landed in Denver. In the aftermath, functioning was nearly impossible. Sometimes she’d skip meals because the idea of choosing what to shop for and cook was overwhelming.
“It was hard not to feel like a failure,” she said.
Killam was skeptical of therapy in general, but said she started it shortly after Nickels’ death to work through the sadness, guilt and feeling of abandonment from losing her partner. It helped to have an outside perspective, because her family and friends, while supportive, didn’t know how to challenge her to change thought patterns that weren’t helping her, she said.
Any loss can be devastating, but when someone dies by suicide, the survivors may become hypervigilant, for fear that they miss a sign that someone else they love is struggling, she said.
People can’t go back to the way life was before a major loss, so they have to think about what it would mean to rebuild, Doria said. Often, that involves doing something to remember and give meaning to the life the deceased led, such as continuing to make their favorite recipe or volunteering for a cause they cared about, she said.
“When you lose someone to suicide, it can really shake your worldview and understanding of life,” she said. “Resilience is believing that it’s possible to bounce back and committing yourself every day to doing that.”
Her son left behind five children, four of whom she and her husband are now raising. They had to process their own grief while helping their grandchildren through the mental health struggles that come from losing a parent early in life.
“It was nonstop therapy for three years,” she said.
Even seven years after the loss, it still can come up in unexpected ways, such as when she saw a friend’s daughter holding her sister’s baby — an experience her oldest son never got to have with his younger brother’s children.
Her youngest grandson has been having a hard time coping with her recent breast cancer diagnosis because of the fear of losing another central figure in his life.
“I’m the only parent, mom figure he’s had,” she said.
People who are grieving also experience the secondary losses of people they thought would be with them through the worst times, who ultimately don’t always come through, Rouse said. And it can be hard to connect with people when your world is reeling, but they seem essentially fine, she said.
“My circle got a lot smaller, that’s for sure,” she said.
Amanda Killam and Rob Nickels. Nickels died by suicide in 2024 at age 42, and Killam struggled to make sense of the loss and move forward. (Photo courtesy of Amanda Killam)
Some people withdraw or don’t talk about the person who died because they don’t want to remind their grieving friend of their loss, but they aren’t going to be able to forget the loss, regardless, Killam said. People who are grieving need space to talk about their loved one, she said.
“It’s important to show up for your people because it’s not just sadness, it’s confusion, it’s trauma,” she said. “The ultimate reality is that we are going to be sad because we miss them, but we still want to talk about them.”
For the first year, Killam said she was in “survival mode,” but she’s gradually started to focus more on how she wants to honor Nickels’ life.
She scattered his ashes at places that meant something to him, wears his Broncos shirt to football games and started a mental-health-themed line of workout clothes to encourage people to reach out if they need help. He loved to exercise and would have wanted to spare others the pain he felt, she said.
“It just makes me feel like I’m keeping him alive,” she said.
Tips for supporting a grieving friend
Offer concrete help, such as preparing a meal or running errands. People don’t always know what they need if you give an open-ended offer.
Give the person space to talk about their loved ones. Avoid platitudes such as that the deceased is “in a better place” or that “it gets easier.”
Try to be understanding if the person is distracted or cancels plans.
Consider the closeness of your relationship and what you can sustain before making commitments, so the person doesn’t feel abandoned.
Continue to check in, even when months or years have passed.
Tips for handling your own grief
Important people in your life may not grieve the same way. Consider looking for others to talk with, such as members of a support group.
Decide which traditions you want to carry forward. You don’t have to do everything you used to, but preparing a favorite recipe or making a memorial ornament could help you feel close to the person you lost.
Avoid the impulse to isolate yourself.
Take small actions to care for yourself, such as sitting in the sun with your coffee.
Seek professional help if grief is interfering with your ability to function.
Some might say the new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus that opened recently in a former 255-room hotel is undergirded by one of humanity’s seven deadly sins — envy.
The intent is to turn that feeling into a motivational force. For his part, Mayor Mike Coffman prefers to refer to the three-tiered residential system at the homeless navigation center as an “incentive-based program” — one that awards increasingly comfortable living quarters to those showing progress on their journey to self-sufficiency.
“The notion here is (that) different standards of living act as an incentive,” Coffman said in early November during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the campus, which occupies a former Crowne Plaza Hotel at East 40th Avenue and Chambers Road. “The idea is to move up the tiers into much better living situations.”
Clients in the new facility, which opened its doors on Nov. 17, start at the bottom with a cot and a locker. They can eventually migrate to a hotel room, with a locking door and a private bathroom.
But that upgrade comes with a price.
“To get a room here, you have to be working full time,” Coffman said.
It’s an approach that the mayor says threads the needle between housing-first and work-first, the two prevailing strategies for addressing homelessness today. The housing-first approach emphasizes getting someone into a stable home before requiring employment, sobriety or treatment. A work-first setup conditions housing on a person finding work and seeking help with underlying mental health and addiction problems.
“We’re providing a continuum of services that starts with an emergency shelter,” said Jim Goebelbecker, the executive director of Advance Pathways.
Advance Pathways, the nonprofit group that ran the Aurora Resource Day Center before its recent closure, was chosen through a competitive bidding process to operate the new navigation campus in Aurora — with $2 million in annual help from the city. Goebelbecker said the tiered approach at the new facility “taps into a person’s motivation for change.”
The Aurora Regional Navigation Campus’ debut nearly completes a mission that has been in the works for more than three years. It is the fourth — and penultimate — metro Denver homeless navigation center to go online since the Colorado General Assembly passed House Bill 1378 in 2022.
The bill allocated American Rescue Plan Act dollars to stand up one central homeless navigation center. The plan has since shifted to five smaller centers, with locations in Aurora, Lakewood, Boulder, Denver and Englewood. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs in late 2023 approved $52 million for the centers. The final center, the Jefferson County Regional Navigation Campus in Lakewood, is undergoing renovations and will open next year.
Aurora’s center, with 640 beds across its three tiered spaces, is by far the largest of the five facilities.
Cathy Alderman, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, said the opening of Aurora’s navigation campus is “a really big deal.” Aside from serving its own clientele, she expects the center to send referrals to the coalition’s newly opened Sage Ridge Supportive Residential Community near Watkins, where people without stable housing go to address their substance-use disorders.
“A person can go to one place and get multiple needs met,” Alderman said, referring to the array of job, medical and addiction treatment services that give homeless navigation centers their name. “We are excited that the new campus is now up and running.”
The new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus, operated by Advance Pathways, photographed in Aurora on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
‘How do I move up?’
Walking into the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus feels like walking into, well, a hotel.
The swimming pool was removed during renovation, as was a water fountain in the lobby. Everything else stayed, including beds, bedding, furniture — even a stash of bottled cocktail delights. But not the alcohol to go with it.
“They left everything, down to the forks and knives and a wall of maraschino cherries,” said Jessica Prosser, Aurora’s director of housing and community services, as she walked through the hotel’s industrial kitchen.
The kitchen, which was part of the $26.5 million sale of the Crowne Plaza Hotel to Aurora last year, was a godsend to an operation tasked with serving three meals a day to hundreds of people. The city spent another $13.5 million to renovate the building.
“To build a new commercial kitchen is a half-million dollars, easy,” Prosser said.
The layout of the navigation center was deliberate, she said. The hotel’s convention center space is now occupied by Tier I and Tier II housing. The first tier is made up of nearly 300 cots, divided by sex. There are lockers for personal belongings and shared bathrooms. Anyone is welcome.
On the other side of a nondescript wall is Tier II, which is composed of a grid of 114 compartmentalized, open-air cubicles with proper beds and lockable storage. The center assigns residents in this tier case managers to help them treat personal challenges and get on the path toward landing a job.
The Tier II “Courage” space, which offers overnight accommodation for people who are working on recovery, employment and housing pathways at the new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus in Aurora, on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
Tier III residents live in the 255 hotel rooms. They must have a full-time job and are required to pay a third of their income to the program. Residents in this tier will typically remain at Advance Pathways for up to two years before they have the skills and stability to find housing on the outside, Goebelbecker said.
People living in the congregate tiers can house their dogs in a pet room, which can accommodate 40 canines. (No cats, gerbils or fish). The center also doesn’t accept children. Around 60 staff members, plus 10 contracted security personnel, will work at the facility 24/7.
Shining a bright light on the path forward and upward inside the facility — the windows of some of the coveted private rooms are fully visible from the lobby — is an “intentional design feature,” Prosser said.
“How do I move up?” she mused, stepping into the shoes of a resident eyeing the facility’s layout. “How do I get in there?”
The Tier III “Commitment” space, which provides private rooms that will serve people who are in the workforce and are building towards financial independence, seen at the new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus in Aurora on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
It’s a system that demands something of the people using it, Coffman said, while at the same time providing the guidance and help that clients will need.
“This is not just maintaining people where they are — this is about moving people forward,” the mayor said.
The approach is familiar to Shantell Anderson, Advance Pathways’ program director. She told her life story during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, bringing tears to the eyes of some in the audience.
A native of Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood, Anderson fell in with the wrong crowd. She became pregnant at 15 and got hooked on cocaine. She spiraled into a life on the streets that resulted in her children being sent to an aunt for caretaking.
But through treatment and by intersecting with the right people, she recovered. She earned a nursing degree and worked at RecoveryWorks, a nonprofit organization that operated a day shelter in Lakewood, before taking the job at Advance Pathways.
The Tier I “Compassion” emergency shelter, which provides immediate short-term shelter for those in need at the new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus in Aurora on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
“This is a system that honors people’s dignity,” Anderson said, her voice heavy with emotion.
In an interview, she said assuming the burden to improve her situation was critical to her transformation.
“I actually did that — no one gave me anything,” said Anderson, 48. “If it was handed to me, I didn’t appreciate it.”
How much responsibility to place on the people being helped by such programs is still a matter of intense debate by policymakers and advocates for homeless people. The housing-first approach favored by Denver and many big cities across the country is anchored in the idea that work or treatment requirements will result in many people falling through the cracks and staying outside, particularly those who face mental-health challenges.
The Bridge House in Englewood, one of the five metro area navigation centers, follows a “Ready to Work” model that is similar to that of the upper tiers of the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus.
Opened in May, the Bridge House has 69 beds. CEO Melissa Arguello-Green said the organization asks its clients (called trainees) to put skin in the game by landing a job with Bridge House’s help and then contributing a third of their paycheck as rent.
“We help them find employment through our agency so they can leave our agency,” she said. “We’re looking for self-sufficiency that will get people off system support.”
Arguello-Green said she would like to see more coordination between the metro’s five navigation centers, though she acknowledged it’s still in the early going.
“We’re missing that come-to-the-table collaboration,” she said.
Advance Pathways volunteer outreach coordinator Evan Brown organizes the clothing bank before the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus’ grand opening ceremony in Aurora on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
Homeless numbers still rising
Shannon Gray, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, said her department had started convening quarterly in-person meetings across the locations.
“While each navigation campus is unique and reflects community-specific strategies, they are all a part of a regional effort to bring external partners together onsite to provide needed services and referrals,” Gray said. Together, they are “building towards a larger regional system to connect homeless households to a larger network of opportunities.”
The centers are permitted to “tailor their approach to their unique needs and vision,” she said. While Englewood and Aurora use a tiered system, Gray said, the other three centers don’t.
“It is important to understand that DOLA serves as a funder for these regional navigation campuses — we do not oversee their operation or maintenance,” she said.
Denver’s navigation center, which opened in December 2023 in a former DoubleTree Hotel on Quebec Street, offers 289 rooms to those in need, said Julia Marvin, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Housing Stability.
She called the facility an “integral component of Denver’s All in Mile High homelessness initiative,” Mayor Mike Johnston’s ambitious effort to appreciably reduce homelessness in the city. The center is just one of several former hotels and other shelter sites in the system.
Earlier this year, his administration cited annual count numbers showing a 45% decrease in the number of people sleeping on the streets since 2023 — dropping from 1,423 to 785 people, despite overall homelessness continuing to increase in that time.
In fact, homelessness numbers are still going in the wrong direction across the seven-county metro, per the latest Point-in-Time survey from the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, which captures a one-night snapshot. The January count revealed that 10,774 people were homeless on the night of the survey, up from 9,977 in the count the year before.
Anderson, the Advance Pathways program director, said the new Aurora facility was opening at just the right time. Despite a recent calming in runaway home values in metro Denver, the $650,000 median price of a detached home in October still demarcated a housing market that was out of reach for many.
“I am excited,” Anderson said of the Aurora navigation campus’ debut. “I’m waiting for people to walk through the door and start the next chapter of their journey.”
Nine people were taken to the hospital after they were exposed to carbon monoxide in a Commerce City home on Wednesday afternoon, according to the South Adams County Fire Department.
First responders were called about people feeling sick in a multi-family home near East 69th Place and Olive Street at 12:46 p.m., agency officials said.
There were no carbon monoxide alarms in the home, but people living there called 911 after feeling dizzy and getting headaches, spokesperson Maria Carabajal said.
Carbon monoxide is a colorless and odorless gas that can come from space heaters, generators, furnaces and fireplaces, and exposure can be fatal.
Fire crews detected high levels of carbon monoxide in the home and evacuated the homeowners, and nine people were taken to the hospital for medical evaluation.
The incident is under investigation, but the leak was likely caused by the furnace in the home, which was recently serviced, Carabajal said.
Daniel Romero, 19, was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder and Michael Fernandez Jr., 24, was arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder in connection with a fatal shooting on Oct. 27, according to the Westminster Police Department.
Officers responded to 911 calls about gunshots at a parking lot in the 8400 block of Decatur Street around 8 p.m. and found a woman who had been shot inside a vehicle.
The woman was taken to the hospital and later died. She was identified by the Adams County Coroner’s Office as Maria Ines De Luna Ojeda, 34. The cause and manner of her death are under investigation.
Westminster police on Thursday said the shooting was a carjacking that turned deadly and identified Romero as the suspected shooter and Fernandez as the driver.
Romero and Fernandez are being held without bail at the Adams County Jail and are set to appear in court for a filing of charges hearing on Monday.
The final person under indictment in a suspected burglary ring was arrested Tuesday during a traffic stop in Adams County.
Kimberly Salas was arrested by the Adams County Sheriff’s Office near Interstate 76 and Federal Boulevard in the late evening, according to an update from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office.
Salas is one of six people charged in connection with a crime ring that broke into cars and garages in Boulder County and across the metro Denver area to steal high-end bikes and credit cards. In all, the crime ring is suspected of stealing about $828,000 in property and damaging $39,880 worth of property from January 2024 through September 2025.
The other five individuals named in the indictment were arrested Oct. 22.
A handful of Colorado families sued the Adams County Sheriff’s Office this week for refusing to allow in-person jail visits and instead requiring inmates and family members to pay for phone and video calls through a system that has, in five years, put $3.1 million into the sheriff’s coffers.
The lawsuit is focused on visits between parents and children, and argues that prohibiting in-person contact between parents and their kids is both a violation of their constitutional rights and likely to cause long-term harm to everyone involved. The proposed class-action case includes both minor children who want to visit their incarcerated fathers, and mothers who want to visit their incarcerated sons.
“They’ve denied children the right to have contact visits with their parents, to be hugged by them, to look them in the eyes, to have the in-person relationship that is so necessary, especially for a child’s healthy development,” said Dan Meyer, litigation and policy director at Spero Justice Center, one of several organizations involved in the lawsuit.
The Colorado case is the third lawsuit filed as part of a recent nationwide effort to force jails to allow in-person family visits.
Adams County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Shea Haney declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs include 4- and 6-year-old siblings in Adams County who have not been able to visit their father since he was jailed in February, as well as a 9-year-old boy whose stepfather was jailed from June to October.
“To have to tell my child he wasn’t allowed to go see his dad, it was just really painful,” said Autumn Ray, mother of the 9-year-old boy.
She spent as much as $400 a month on calls to the jail during her husband’s incarceration, she said. A phone call to the jail currently costs 15 cents a minute, while video calls cost 20 cents a minute, according to the lawsuit.
Ray’s calls to the jail routinely stretched over an hour, she said, in part because the system for making calls often did not work, so she and her husband, whom she declined to name, would have more to catch up on when they could connect. The parents decided that spending the money on the phone calls was necessary as their son struggled with his dad’s absence, she said.
“His dad and I talked and decided it was worth using some of our savings for him to still be able to talk to his dad on the phone, because otherwise the full brunt of parenting a neurodivergent, grief-stricken child was fully on me,” she said.
The lawsuit alleges that the sheriff’s office is denying in-person visits to ramp up profits from the video and phone calls, and notes that the Colorado Supreme Court ordered the Adams County sheriff to allow in-person jail visits in 1978 — an order they say still stands. The jail has rooms dedicated to such visits that are going unused, the lawsuit alleges.
The jail has not allowed in-person visits for family and friends since at least 2006, and stopped offering free video calls at kiosks in its lobby in 2020, according to the complaint.
The jail now uses a company called HomeWAV to allow video and phone calls between inmates and their friends and family. The arrangement calls for the sheriff’s office to receive at least 40% of video call money and 80% of phone call money, according to the lawsuit.
The sheriff’s office has received $3.1 million under the contract since 2020, while HomeWAV has earned about $1.7 million, according to the complaint.
“We are confident this can be done safely and affordably,” Meyer said.
Colorado lawmakers this year passed a new law that made in-person visitation a right for prisoners, and specified that it could not be replaced with video calls. The state’s prisons are run separately from county jails.
Alexandra Jordan, an attorney at Public Justice, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization also involved in the lawsuit, said the visitation policy is entirely within the control of Adams County officials.
“They could choose to change their policy tomorrow, and we hope that they do,” she said.
Ray, whose husband was recently transferred to a state prison, is now going through a 60-day waiting period before she and her son can visit in person. She marked the date — in the first week of December — on the calendar for her son, so he could see the first time in six months they’ll be able to visit his dad face to face.
A 39-year-old man died after being hit by a car while riding an electric scooter in Thornton last week, police said.
The scooter rider, whose identity has not been released publicly, was headed west on West 88th Avenue when he was hit by an eastbound Dodge Caravan turning north onto Lipan Street, according to Thornton police.
The crash happened about 7:45 p.m. Thursday, police said. The intersection lies between Bell Roth Park and Sky Park in southwest Thornton.
Paramedics took the scooter rider to the hospital, where he died from his injuries, according to the department. He will be identified by the Adams County coroner’s office.
The 22-year-old man driving the Dodge Caravan was not injured and remained on scene after the crash, police said.
Additional information about the crash was not available Wednesday.
Anyone who witnessed or has information about the crash is asked to call investigators at 720-977-5069.
WESTMINSTER, Colo. — For the past five years, the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office has been searching for a way to bring resources and support to domestic violence survivors and their families under one roof.
Finally, the office has found a temporary home for its Family Justice Center inside a suite of offices at the Adams County Human Services Center in Westminster — a space officials believe has the power to save lives.
“This is an important milestone. We’ve got a lot more work to do, but this, today’s milestone, is worthy of celebration,” said 17th Judicial District Attorney Brian Mason, who represents both Adams and Broomfield counties. “The need to serve victims of domestic violence exists now. It existed yesterday. It existed five years ago. And so, we wanted to find, first, a place where we could open a Family Justice Center as soon as possible in a temporary location.”
Mason announced the update to a room filled with people, many wearing small purple ribbons as a sign of domestic violence awareness.
Jordan Ward
District Attorney Brian Mason explains the work that led to the Family Justice Center on Monday.
Mason said when he first became district attorney, he started the Special Victims Unit, which focuses exclusively on domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking cases. Next, he created the Domestic Violence High-Risk Team, which reviews reports from law enforcement about domestic violence and searches for what contributed to cases becoming deadly.
“The Domestic Violence High-Risk Team is already a success story in this community. And back in 2021 and 2022, we sought a grant through our federal government,” Mason told the crowd. “We succeeded, for the first time, in getting what, for us, was a historic grant of $2 million to fund the Domestic Violence High-Risk Team and to serve victims of domestic violence here in the 17th Judicial District.”
Mason said he felt more had to be done.
“The most dangerous time in the life of a victim of domestic violence is when she is trying to get out — that’s when the most domestic violence homicides occur. And yet, right now, we put up countless barriers to victims and survivors of domestic violence for them to get the services that they need,” Mason said. “A hypothetical victim of domestic violence in Commerce City has to travel 300 miles to get the services that she needs. That alone is an enormous barrier for victims of domestic violence to get help, and it doesn’t include the hours that they have to spend at all the places that they go.”
Jordan Ward
District Attorney Brian Mason explains what the future Family Justice Center will look like.
Child care, housing assistance, legal services, counseling, and safety planning are all examples of the needs someone trapped in the cycle of domestic violence may want to access. That’s where the Family Justice Center steps in to help, according to Mason.
“Every single jurisdiction with a Family Justice Center has seen their domestic violence homicides go down, and there actually aren’t that many of them,” Mason said. “There are about 150 nationwide, and in a country of 300 million people, that’s not a lot.”
According to Mason, this Family Justice Center would be the third in Colorado. There are similar facilities at the Rose Andom Center in Denver and PorchLight in Lakewood.
Roughly two years ago, Mason said several stakeholders and those who have worked on other Family Justice Centers gathered for a listening session to evaluate the needs of the community. Five months later, a strategic plan was developed with two parts: the first, a temporary space for the center, and the second, a permanent home for the Family Justice Center.
“For the last nine months, more than nine months, we’ve been searching for a space where we can open up a Family Justice Center right away, albeit temporarily, but a place where we can actually start providing services under one roof to victims and survivors of families of domestic violence. And we have found that space thanks to the generosity of the Adams County commissioners and Adams County government. They have donated to this project, to our Family Justice Center Project,” Mason said. “Since that generous donation — I’m going to call it a donation — we’ve been working for several months on a design, because the suite of offices that they have graciously given us wasn’t being used for this purpose. And so, we’ve been working on a design, and we’ve had multiple stakeholders involved in that process.”
Denver7 asked Mason why it has taken five years for the temporary space to be identified.
“It’s a pretty big project to address domestic violence in a thorough and comprehensive manner, and this community has had a need for a facility like a Family Justice Center for a long time,” Mason said. “We’re now in a place where we can deliver on that.”
Jordan Ward
A layout showing the Family Justice Center inside of the Adams County Human Services Center in Westminster.
Mason said the Family Justice Center can reside within the Human Services Center for three to five years, according to the agreement with Adams County. The goal is to open the Family Justice Center to the public next year, likely by late summer or early fall.
“I think we are going to outgrow this space very, very quickly. It’s a wonderful space, but it’s small, and we have thousands of victims of domestic violence every single year. So when we outgrow it, we will need a bigger space,” Mason said. “The need exists right now, so we didn’t want to wait for the process of planning and designing and building a brick and mortar building from scratch to open. And that’s why we’re going to open in this space first, with the long-term goal of having a permanent brick and mortar building.”
The space will undergo design changes and reconstruction thanks to funding from Adams County, Mason said.
“This room here right now is a conference room, but this will be redesigned and reconfigured and refurnished as a welcoming, safe place for children of domestic violence,” Mason said, pointing to the room.
Crime
Domestic violence deaths in Colorado rose by 24% in 2024, report shows
While the report found that domestic violence-related fatalities are more common in rural counties, it determined Broomfield County had the highest number of domestic violence deaths per 100,000 residents when it comes to urban counties. Adams County was in the middle of the list of urban counties when looking at the same metric.
In 2024, all eight collateral victims of domestic violence were children, ranging in age from three months to seven years old. The report also found the risk to children has “significantly increased over the years.”
“One of my first memories as a child is witnessing domestic violence where my dad was abusing my mom,” said Adams County Commissioner Emma Pinter, who attended the announcement about the Family Justice Center. “It is one of the first things I remember happening in our household, and it led to a lot of instability, and then ultimately, our family broke up. And my mom and her two children, me and my sister, experienced homelessness.”
Jordan Ward
Adams County Commissioner Emma Pinter shared her personal story about domestic violence with Denver7.
Pinter said she personally experienced a lack of resources.
“We did not have access to anything like a Family Justice Center,” Pinter explained. “We didn’t have access to extra food, counseling, doctors’ visits, attorneys, none of that. My mom was completely on her own.”
A Family Justice Center would have been pivotal, Pinter said, to ensure her mother knew she was not alone in her journey.
“To have somebody help her navigate that, so she wasn’t alone, would have been transformative for our family, and possibly could have given us some of the stability that we never had,” said Pinter.
Pinter believes her story is one of many that prove a Family Justice Center can be a solution to an incredibly complex problem.
“All of those worries that parents carry, or individuals carry, when they’re leaving a violent situation can be addressed in one location,” said Pinter. “This is going to take a community effort to make sure that we continue to have funding at a time when the federal government is shutting down and funding is scarce. It’ll be a community effort, but this will save lives.”
According to Mason, future funding will come from “as many sources as possible.” He explained the Family Justice Center will be funded by both public and government dollars, adding that the 17th Judicial District will have to search for funding sources.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available through Violence Free Colorado or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233.
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The mother of two Colorado children found safe Sunday in Texas, who she does not have custody of, is accused of abducting the pair and violating a protection order, according to law enforcement.
Adams County sheriff’s deputies responded to reports of a parental abduction in the 8600 block of Faraday Street, north of Denver, on Saturday, according to a news release from the agency.
The guardian told deputies that two children — a 13-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl — were taken by their mother, sheriff’s officials said.
Sheriff’s officials said the mother was restrained from contacting her children and was only allowed to have supervised visits. She allegedly told the children’s guardian that she planned to take the pair to Mexico.
Investigators determined that the mother and children were in Texas and issued a statewide Amber Alert.
Police officers in Fredericksburg, Texas, found the children and arrested the mother on suspicion of violating a protection order early Sunday morning, according to the news release.
A Thornton teacher was injured after someone stabbed him outside Meadow Community School on Thursday afternoon, police officials said.
Thornton police responded to the attack in the 9100 block of Monroe Street just after 3 p.m. The teacher was taken to the hospital with injuries that were not life threatening and police arrested 31-year-old Damien Brooks at the scene.
There is no apparent connection between the teacher and Brooks, and it appears to be an unprovoked attack, the Thornton Police Department said in a news release.
Victim advocates were called to the school to help students and staff who witnessed the stabbing.
Brooks was previously convicted of attempted assault in June, felony domestic violence assault in 2023 and criminal mischief in 2020, according to court records.
Two Northglenn women are charged with 109 counts of animal cruelty after police rescued more than 70 dogs and cats from a home in the 1900 block of 116th Drive in July.
Patti Joslin, 69, and Dakotah Joslin, 32, each is charged with 11 counts of felony aggravated animal cruelty and 98 counts of misdemeanor cruelty to animals, according to the 17th Judicial District.
The district attorney’s office did not say how the women are related to each other.
Northglenn police began investigating the case in July and removed dozens of animals from the home and took them to shelters for medical evaluation and care.
Officers found two dead animals, a dog and a cat, inside the home.
Patti Joslin is in custody on a $5,000 bail, and her next court date was not available. Dakotah Joslin was released on $5,000 bail and is set to appear in court Nov. 10, according to court records.
A motorcyclist died Thursday after hitting the center barrier on Interstate 76 near Eagle Boulevard on Thursday afternoon.
The 82-year-old driver was traveling eastbound on the interstate at about 1:50 p.m. Thursday when she hit the center barrier for unknown reasons, according to Brighton police. She was ejected from the motorcycle, which then rolled over the cable barrier and into the westbound lanes of the interstate. The motorcycle struck another vehicle, though the driver of that vehicle did not sustain any injuries.
The motorcyclist was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died shortly after.
The identity of the motorcyclist is being withheld until next of kin can be notified, according to the news release from the Brighton Police Department. The department’s traffic safety unit does not believe drugs, alcohol or speed played a role in the crash.
