Another wounded officer is in critical condition, and the other has been released from the hospital. “During the exchange, the deputies were able to fire back and the suspect was killed”. Spokeswoman Susan Medina with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said Carrigan “served his community in a superior way and he made the ultimate sacrifice”.
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Jacki Kelley, with the sheriff’s office in neighboring Jefferson County, said the shooter is dead.
“The deputies are one of us and they live with us and they’re friends and neighbors and any time there’s a loss it a loss for all of us”, resident Allison Henry said.
Two other members of the same agency were also shot, with one of them suffering life-threatening injuries. When Wirth didn’t obey the command, the police officer “dove at Wirth’s legs and tackled him, pinning him and disarming him”, according to the newspaper’s report.
In 2013, Martin Wirth sued Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, the state attorney general and a judge, claiming state foreclosure laws are unconstitutional.
Master Patrol Deputy Kolby Martin, an 11-year veteran, was shot multiple times in the lower extremities, and 21-year veteran Captain Mark Hancock was grazed in the ear, Gore said. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit last September.
A website for the Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition includes undated posts that Wirth had lost a legal fight against foreclosure and was facing eviction.
In a video posted to the group’s page, Wirth says he stopped paying his mortgage because he believed that his mortgage lenders were a bunch of “crooks”.
The coalition states on its website that its goal is “to reverse the disastrous trend of foreclosures, evictions and sinking housing values”. “It’s the middle of winter in the mountains”.
Martin Wirth (pictured) also once ran for Senate.
The violence happened at a hillside home in the town of Bailey, about 45 miles southwest of Denver.
There, a gunman took several girls hostage in a high school classroom a decade ago, killing one before himself.
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Medina said she didn’t know whether investigators were looking for other suspects, but emphasized that area residents are not in danger.
