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  • Students’ fight-turned-shooting near Denver high school sets neighbors on edge

    Students’ fight-turned-shooting near Denver high school sets neighbors on edge

    A fistfight between two Excel Academy students escalated into a shooting this week, sending people running for cover and setting neighbors around the Denver public high school on edge.

    The fight-turned-shooting happened at around 12:15 p.m. Monday in the 3100 block of West Colorado Avenue, around the corner from Excel Academy, a pathway school that is designed to help students who are behind on credits get back on track for graduation.

    Two students and their families were involved in the fight, Principal Cynthia Navarro wrote in a letter to parents Monday.

    “At no point were our students or staff inside the building ever in danger,” she wrote.

    The shooting comes as Denver Public Schools faces increased public scrutiny over its handling of gun violence among students, particularly in the wake of last year’s shooting at East High School in which a 17-year-old student wounded two school administrators.

    People who live near Excel Academy said during a Denver Police Department neighborhood meeting Wednesday that they’ve raised concerns about the school for years — particularly around nuisance issues like students parking across driveways, littering or drag racing in the streets — and questioned whether school officials were doing enough to protect students and residents.

    On Monday, two young women met in the street to fight while a crowd of about a dozen people watched, according to video of the incident reviewed by The Denver Post. Most appeared to be high-school-aged, but there were at least two adults in the mix, said Cyan Santillana, who witnessed the fight. One of the adults was encouraging the fight, she said.

    After a couple of minutes of fighting, at least one of the people watching drew a gun and fired shots, the video shows. The crowd scattered, with people diving behind cars or into alleys for cover. A single adult man was shot in the incident and survived, Denver police said.

    No arrests had been made by Wednesday and police did not answer questions about the man’s condition or about the shooting.

    Fights in the neighborhood, which abuts Federal Boulevard, are not entirely uncommon, Santillana said, but this was the first time she could remember shots being fired.

    “It’s getting to the point where something definitely needs to be done now,” she said. “There are kids in this neighborhood, there is an elementary school right down the street, and there was this active shooting right in front of the houses.”

    She added that most of the 250 students at Excel Academy don’t cause problems, but that the small group who do “give the school a bad rap.” One student just happened to be walking by when the shooting happened and had to run for cover, Santillana said.

    The shooting took place during the school’s lunch hour, when many students were out of the building enjoying warm weather, said Scott Pribble, spokesman for Denver Public Schools. The fight prompted a 20-minute “secure perimeter” at the school, during which staff and students stayed inside and locked exterior doors, Navarro said in the letter to parents.

    Shelly Bradbury

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  • ACLU sues Children’s Hospital Colorado for halting adult gender-affirming surgeries

    ACLU sues Children’s Hospital Colorado for halting adult gender-affirming surgeries

    The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado alleges Children’s Hospital Colorado is discriminating against transgender patients by refusing to perform surgeries it offers to cisgender patients with other conditions.

    The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Denver District Court, also states the hospital is discriminating on the basis of disability, because gender dysphoria — distress when a person’s sense of their gender doesn’t align with physical characteristics — is a medical condition.

    The ACLU filed it on behalf of an 18-year-old Denver patient who was on track to receive gender-affirming surgery before the hospital discontinued that service.

    The main reason young cisgender men seek chest reconstruction is if they developed feminine-appearing breasts because of hormonal imbalances or medication side effects, according to the lawsuit. The hospital also sometimes performs breast reduction surgery on young women who have excessive chest tissue that causes pain, it said.

    The patient, who is identified in the lawsuit by the pseudonym Caden Kent, started receiving care at Children’s for mental health concerns when he was 16. He was diagnosed with gender dysphoria a few months later and had undergone about eight months of assessment before determining he was a candidate for surgery once he turned 18.

    In July, the hospital announced it would no longer offer chest reconstruction surgery for transgender patients, though they could still receive other gender-affirming treatment, including counseling, puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The hospital had only offered surgery to patients who were at least 18.

    The hospital stated it had received an unusual number of referrals for gender-affirming surgery as programs shut down in other states, and that it didn’t shut down the program because of threats. It came at a time when children’s hospitals were scrubbing references to transgender care from their websites, though, with at least 21 removing information in 2022. A search on the hospital’s website for its TRUE Center for Gender Diversity no longer turns up any results.

    According to the lawsuit, Kent chose to undergo surgery at Children’s because he received other care there, and hoped to recover from the surgery before leaving for college in the fall. Other surgical providers who accept his family’s insurance are booked up, meaning his parents will have to pay out-of-pocket for him to undergo the surgery in that time frame. Kent had resorted to chest-binding to ease his dysphoria, but found himself withdrawing from others when binding became too painful and he couldn’t otherwise hide the breast tissue, it said.

    Meg Wingerter

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  • Cyberattack shuts down Colorado public defender’s office

    Cyberattack shuts down Colorado public defender’s office

    A cyberattack on the Office of Colorado State Public Defender has forced the office to shut down its computer network, locking public defenders across the state out of critical work systems.

    Colorado public defenders do not have access to their work computers, are unable to access court dockets or court filings and can’t do any significant work for clients in court, according to internal emails reviewed by The Denver Post.

    Office spokesman James Karbach confirmed the breach in a statement Monday, saying officials “recently became aware that some data within our computer system was encrypted by malware.”

    Karbach did not say how long the public defender’s office expects to be shut down or when the attack happened, but emails sent to public defenders indicate the statewide office is effectively “non-operational” and the outage could last as long as a week.



    Shelly Bradbury

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  • Colorado civil rights attorney Kevin Williams, who fought to improve lives of people with disabilities, dies at 57

    Colorado civil rights attorney Kevin Williams, who fought to improve lives of people with disabilities, dies at 57

    Colorado civil rights attorney Kevin Williams died this week after 26 years of fighting to improve the lives of people with disabilities. He was 57.

    Williams died Tuesday after a short illness, according to colleagues at the Denver-based Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, where he launched the legal program in 1997 upon graduation from law school.

    A quadriplegic paralyzed from his chest down following a car crash at age 19, Williams steadily increased access for disabled people by filing lawsuits — pressing for enforcement under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act and the Fair Housing Act.

    He began this work as a third-year law student at the University of Denver. Shortly before his graduation, he sued his law school. The issue was compliance with the ADA. He prevailed, leading to required improvements, including a wheelchair-accessible graduation venue.

    Often serving as the plaintiff, Williams repeated that feat again and again, expanding access for Coloradans with disabilities in stores, restaurants, public transit systems, theaters, arenas and travel pathways around the state. For example, his litigation compelled the operators of Red Rocks Amphitheatre to provide accessible parking, seating and ticketing.

    He also led other lawyers into disability rights work.

    Williams grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland.  He made Colorado his home in 1990, the year President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law. He enjoyed drives in the mountains, attending concerts and visiting local breweries and distilleries.

    Friends this week remembered him as passionate in his pursuit of civil rights.

    “Kevin was contemplative, thorough and certain not to leave any stone unturned, especially in litigation,” said Andrew Montoya, who worked in the coalition’s legal program as an assistant and then was inspired to attend law school.

    “Even seemingly mundane legal issues could occupy hours of lively discussion ranging from interpretive case law to contemporary and historical politics to litigation strategy to the meaning of life, and back again,” Montoya said. “His passion for civil rights, both in general and specifically those of people with disabilities, clearly animated his work, both in the courtroom and in the rest of the world.”

    He also had a knack for making light of difficulties. Friends recalled his adaptation of the Beatles’ “Let It Be” — a rendition that he titled “Let Us Pee.” (“When I find myself in times of trouble; The bathroom door is two-foot-three; Whisper words of wisdom; Let us pee, let us pee.”

    “He was intense, passionate, focused and very analytical. What kept him motivated was seeing people with disabilities face discrimination and knowing that the laws that are supposed to protect us are being violated,” said Julie Reiskin, co-executive director of the coalition.

    “What bothered him was the blatant violation of the law, especially by those who should know better, such as courts and lawyers that made excuses rather than working to fix the problem.”

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    Bruce Finley

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