Brief by Ed Quillen
Regional News – November 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
School security
School security became a major issue in Central Colorado, and across the United States, after 16-year-old Emily Keyes was shot to death in a classroom on Sept. 27 at Platte Canyon High School along U.S. 285 near Bailey.
Duane Morrison, a 53-year-old who may have been living out of his vehicle in the Bailey area, entered the school at about 11:45 a.m. carrying two pistols and a backpack which, he claimed, had explosives inside.
He kept six hostages, all girls, in an English classroom as the school was evacuated and law-enforcement personnel arrived. At 3:30 p.m., Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said, Morrison quit talking to negotiators, and talked about a 4 p.m. deadline.
A Jefferson County SWAT team blew a hole in the classroom wall, hoping to get a clear shot at Morrison, but they couldn’t. They then blew open the door. Keyes ran, and Morrison shot her before killing himself.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen that way,”Wegener said, as he stood by his decision, since the girls were being sexually abused. He was strongly supported by the community, and while it’s easy to second-guess, we can’t imagine a better response than the one he made.
The brutal crime came as a major shock in an area populated by many people who had moved to the mountains “to get away from it all,”but there’s no such place — even the Amish country of Pennsylvania, where five girls were killed in a one-room schoolhouse on Oct. 2.
Platte Canyon High and adjacent Fitzsimmons Middle School have hired security guards and installed more security cameras on campus.
In Salida, high school Principal Bob Carrick on Oct. 10 asked the school board to get a “resource officer”– a police officer assigned to the school to serve as a deterrent and first responder. Leadville’s school district explained its security measures to the Herald-Democrat, noting that “You can never plan for everything.”
Custer County High School in Westcliffe plans to work with County Sheriff Fred Jobe on training and lock-down drills that involve a pretend shooter in the school. “Nowhere is safe from that kind of violence, as much as we’d like to think,” Superintendent Lance Villers said. Jobe observed that for a school to be completely safe from outsiders, it would have to be built like a prison.
Oh, Christmas Tree
A Salida holiday tradition — the lighting of Tenderfoot Hill to appear like a gigantic Christmas tree — is in jeopardy this year due to a dispute over property appraisals.
It’s a complicated issue. Start with Judy and Terry Everett, who own 17.67 acres on Tenderfoot where lights have been placed for years. Local developer P.T. Wood wants to buy that land and trade it to the City of Salida for a dozen lots in the Hillside subdivision (the far side of the tracks) with a provision that he could build housing there. If these deals went through, the lights could stay on Tenderfoot. If not, Judy Everett has said she will demand the lights be removed from their property, which would greatly diminish, if not eliminate, the big Christmas tree.
The snag is a major difference in appraised values for the parcels, as well as whether development should be allowed on the Hillside lots.
Traffic Fatalities
A semi-truck with a trailer load of cattle missed the first big turn on the east side of Monarch Pass on Oct. 9 after losing control on the ice and snow. The rig rolled on its side and slid about 40 feet down from the highway.
The trailer had 73 head of cattle. Some were killed in the crash, and others were injured and had to be killed by a brand inspector and Division of Wildlife officers. To get into the trailer, they had to cut holes, which allowed healthy animals to escape — they had to be rounded up from the Agate Creek drainage. All told, 30 animals died in the wreck.
The highway was closed to all traffic for about seven hours after the accident. The driver, Micheal Haskett of Kansas, was cited with improper mountain driving.
Climax Resurrection
To prepare to re-open the Climax Mine, once the world’s largest underground mine, as an open-pit operation, a lot of surface buildings are being demolished, including three mills and two water tanks.
Phelps Dodge, the mine’s owner, plans to have it running by 2009 with new crushers and mills, although the current No. 6 crusher will remain, as well as the current pit shop.
Also remaining will be the old black water tower, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
If the market permits, Phelps Dodge plans to run the mine as an open pit for about 20 years, then shift to underground mining.
Infected Mice
Mice carry hantavirus, which can be deadly to humans. And a batch of deer mice trapped near Nathrop in September had an extremely high infection rate — 52%, or 24 of the 46 collected.
“That’s just very scary,” said Charles Calisher, a CSU professor who trapped the mice as part of a study of the genetics of the virus. More typical rates are 12% near Durango and 10% near Grand Junction.
Most human infection comes in the spring and fall, but even with winter coming on, health authorities urged area residents to take precautions: don’t stir up dust in an area with rodent droppings, wear rubber gloves, ventilate it well, and wet it with a bleach solution.
A Certain Appeal
No matter which way the federal Bureau of Land Management rules on the environmental effects of Christo’s “Over the River”project, there will be a court appeal. That prediction came from Roy Masinton, area BLM field manager.
The artist plans to suspend translucent panels over portions of the Arkansas River between Salida and Parkdale, and though many agencies are involved in reviewing the proposal, the BLM has the lead role.
A full Environmental Impact Statement will be required, rather than the less-thorough Environmental Assessment, and the BLM is awaiting more detailed plans before hiring a third-party contractor to conduct the EIS, which Christo will pay for.
“I anticipate, no matter what decision is made, we’ll go to court on it,”Masinton predicted.
Lead Report
The lead levels in Custer County roads (the topic of Hal Walter’s column in our October edition) are within acceptable limits, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which released preliminary results of its study in late September.
For 30 years, the county used mine waste to surface roads near the ghost town of Ilse and the Terrible Mine,
The acceptable level, according to the EPA, is 400 parts per million or less, and the field tests of roads and private ground found it under 300 in all except three spots, all on private property. The tests will be double-checked, with samples going to a different lab, before a final report is issued.
School Shooting
There was shooting on school grounds in Westcliffe on Sept. 28, but no humans were injured. It happened at night after a volleyball game. Two male students were in the parking lot. One had a rifle in his trunk; his passenger picked up the rifle and shot it at a skunk.
There are no reports about the skunk’s welfare, but the school district’s response has attracted considerable criticism. State law requires expulsion, for up to a year, for a student possessing a weapon on school property.
Superintendent Lance Villers said the two 17-year-old boys were suspended, but not expelled, partly because the game was over and so there was no “school activity”underway at the time. Both boys, he said, were good students who had never been in trouble before.
Nonetheless, a letter and an editorial in the Wet Mountain Tribune said the boys should have received more punishment from the school district. They may face criminal charges such as unlawful possession of a firearm on school property and prohibited use of a weapon.
Dachshunds Behaving Badly
Actually, they may not have been misbehaving at all, but they were in the police blotter of the Leadville Herald-Democrat. On Aug. 27, two loose dachshunds were picked up on Harrison Avenue, and on the next night, “a dachshund stumbled into the Scarlet Inn bar.”
Bookkeeper Behaving Worse
Hartsel has a long history, dating back to 1862 when Sam Hartsel gave up on gold prospecting and started raising cattle in the southwest corner of South Park. And now it has a scandal — the bookkeeper for the Hartsel Fire Protection District on Sept. 8 confessed to embezzling $97,000 from the district’s funds to her own accounts.
The thefts were discovered, Chief Jay Hutcheson said, when the district auditor had trouble balancing last year’s books. They confronted the bookkeeper, Debby Eakle of Buena Vista, and “She got backed into a corner, hired a lawyer, and confessed.”
The money amounted to about 20% of the operating budget. Hutcheson said fire protection will continue, but the district had to drop employee benefits and insurance coverage for volunteers. “We’re scrambling to get enough operating funds to continue.”
The HOB Saloon in Hartsel was helping out with a 25-cent surcharge on drinks. The investigation is continuing.
Observations
Responding to criticisms of the Round Mountain Water and Sanitation District Board by the town boards of Westcliffe and Silver Cliff, Gary Henrich of Round Mountain pointed out that the most recent election had no candidates, and “Any one of you could have run and chose not to.”
Wet Mountain Tribune, Sept. 21
“We’re not a bunch of radicals.”
Carolyn Hartshorn, president of the Park County Republican Women, Fairplay Flume, Sept. 22
“I’m hoping they will come to their senses and come in and file for a right-of-way. They’re going to try to call my bluff and I don’t think they’ll be very happy with the outcome.”
Roy Masinton of the BLM, concerning the New Salida Ditch Company’s intake on the Arkansas River, Mountain Mail, Oct. 17
Concerning immigration detainees being kept separate from other inmates in the Park County Jail, Lt. Dan Muldoon said “The detainees don’t have the skills to deal with inmate culture.”
Fairplay Flume, Sept. 29
“Since the latest wave of school shootings, there has been the predictable cry for more school security. I don’t think that’s the answer. I think it would be a very sad development if our public schools became less and less welcoming to visitors.”
Chris Dickey in the Gunnison Country Times, Oct. 5.
“I have sat and listened to Socialist orators who were more diplomatic than the jackass who took the floor that day and beat on our eardrums for over two hours with some of the most asinine crap every to proceed from the mouth of a supposedly intelligent person. After two hours of listening to his senseless adlibs I busted in and demanded to have my say. I was promptly ordered to leave the meeting peacefully or be jailed for disturbing the peace. I left peacefully.”
Ira Tubbs, letter in the Saguache Crescent, Oct. 5
