Michael Sang Correa was charged with torturing five men believed to be opponents of Yahya Jammeh following an unsuccessful plot to remove him from power in 2006.

A jury that heard the case in U.S. District Court in Denver found Correa guilty of torturing people. He also was charged with conspiring with others to commit torture while serving in a military unit known as the “Junglers,” which reported directly to Jammeh, in the latest international trial tied to his regime.

Correa came to the U.S. in 2016 to work as a bodyguard for Jammeh, eventually settling in Denver, where prosecutors said he worked as a day laborer. Correa, who prosecutors say overstayed his visa after Jammeh’s ouster in 2017, was indicted in 2020 under a rarely used law that allows people to be tried in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.

Survivors traveled from Gambia, Europe and elsewhere in the U.S. to testify, telling the jury they were tortured by methods such as being electrocuted and hung upside down while being beaten. Some had plastic bags put over their heads.

Prosecutors showed the jury photos of victims with scars left by objects including a bayonet, a burning cigarette and ropes. The men were asked to circle scars on photos and explain how they received them.

The defense had argued Correa was a low-ranking private who risked torture and death himself if he disobeyed superiors and that he did not have a choice about whether to participate, let alone a decision to make about whether to join a conspiracy.

But while the U.S. government agreed that there’s evidence that the Junglers lived in “constant fear,” prosecutors said some Junglers refused to participate in the torture.

In 2021, a truth commission in Gambia urged that the perpetrators of crimes committed under Jammeh’s regime be prosecuted by the government. Other countries have also tried people connected with his rule.

Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity. In 2023, a German court convicted a Gambian man who was also a member of the Junglers of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the killing of government critics in Gambia.

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Jasmine Rivas-Hernandez was found shot in an alley in the 1500 block of Quebec Street on March 26, 2022. Robert Adam Solano, 36; Joseph Thomas Chavez, 28; and Shiloh Virginia Fresquez, 23, were arrested in connection with her death in January 2023.

Solano was the last suspect in the case to plead guilty, court records show. He was set to go to trial on charges of first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse at the end of April but on March 24 pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 30 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections.

He already is serving a 46-year prison sentence at the Limon Correctional Facility after he was convicted of second-degree murder in the July 2022 shooting death of 27-year-old Ramon Castro Contreras at a Lakewood car wash, according to 9News and state records.

Chavez was charged with being an accessory to a crime and abuse of a corpse in Rivas-Hernandez’s death and pleaded guilty to one felony count of being an accessory in November 2023. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

Fresquez was charged with being an accessory to a crime and pleaded guilty to attempting to influence a public servant, a felony, in June 2023. She was sentenced to five years in community corrections but is now in prison after violating the terms of her sentence, according to the district attorney’s office.

In a statement, Denver District Attorney John Walsh described Rivas-Hernandez’s death as a terrible, senseless tragedy.

“We hope that the conclusion of these cases gives Jasmine’s family and friends some a measure of comfort that justice has been served,” Walsh said.

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U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney approved a temporary restraining order Monday night after the American Civil Liberties Union sued President Donald Trump and members of his administration on behalf of two Venezuelan men, referred to only by their initials, “and others similarly situated” who have been accused of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang.

For two weeks, the federal government is barred from using the Alien Enemies Act to remove plaintiffs D.B.U, R.M.M. and any other noncitizens accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang from both the state and the country.

“This ruling is a critical step toward restoring the rule of law in the face of a rogue administration that has shown utter disregard for the Constitution,” Raquel Lane-Arellano, the communications manager at the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said Tuesday.

The judge’s order will remain in effect until a hearing is held in the case in Denver on April 21.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in March, proclaiming Venezuelans who are members of TdA and not lawful residents of the U.S. “are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed as Alien Enemies.” The administration has used the act to send immigrants — including at least one Venezuelan who had been detained in Colorado — to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

The act has been used only three other times in American history, most recently to intern Japanese-American citizens during World War II.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that anyone being deported under the declaration deserved a hearing in federal court first.

That led federal judges in New York and Texas to place temporary holds on deportations in those areas until Trump’s Republican administration presented a procedure for allowing such appeals. Sweeney’s order follows in their footsteps.

The Colorado order also comes as the ACLU warned, in an emergency filing, that the Trump administration as recently as Monday night may have been preparing Venezuelan men in custody in Aurora for another deportation flight.

The civil rights organization’s attorneys said they had received reports Monday that Venezuelan men being held at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s contract detention facility who were accused of being affiliated with the TdA gang “were rousted from bed and told that they would be leaving.”

The men repeatedly asked where they would be taken, and ICE  agents allegedly refused to answer, ACLU officials said in the document. The flight was later canceled and, as of Tuesday morning, the men remained in Colorado, the attorneys said.

Colorado immigrant advocacy groups applauded the ACLU’s legal challenge to the Alien Enemies Act and the judge’s order.

“The disappearance of our neighbors to a notorious prison without due process should be a wake-up call to the people of the United States,” said Jennifer Piper, the program director for the Colorado office of the American Friends Service Committee.

She added that the Trump administration is asking Congress to triple the budget for immigration detention from $25 billion to more than $60 billion — a request her group opposes.

“We hope that, as a country, we can do more than sending people to foreign prisons,” said Andrea Loya, the executive director of Aurora-based nonprofit Casa de Paz, on Tuesday. “We urge the federal government to make it right for the people they sent to El Salvador without due process.”

The Trump administration’s implementation of the Alien Enemies Act and the lawsuits that followed have become a flashpoint as more than 200 alleged TdA members have been sent from the U.S. to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in El Salvador, escalating tension between the White House and federal courts.

Inmates in El Salvadoran prisons face “life-threatening conditions, persecution and torture,” ACLU officials argued in court documents. That constitutes “irreparable harm,” they said.

D.B.U., a 31-year-old man who fled Venezuela after he was imprisoned for his political activity and protesting against the Venezuelan government, was arrested in January during a raid of what law enforcement and immigration officials have repeatedly called a “Tren de Aragua party” in Adams County.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said 41 people arrested that night were living in Colorado illegally and claimed dozens were connected to the TdA gang. None of those people were criminally charged.

According to the ACLU, D.B.U. was identified as a gang member based on a tattoo of his niece’s name — his only tattoo. He “vehemently denied” being a TdA member.

The second plaintiff in the lawsuit, 25-year-old R.M.M., fled Venezuela after two members of his family were killed by the TdA gang. ACLU officials said in the lawsuit he was afraid the gang would also kill him, his wife and his children.

R.M.M. was detained in March after federal agents saw him standing with other Hispanic men near their cars outside a Colorado residence that law enforcement believed was connected to the TdA gang, according to court records. Like D.B.U., R.M.M. was identified as a gang member based on his tattoos, including one of his birth year, one of his mother’s name, one of “religious significance” and a character from the Monopoly board game.

He is not and never has been a member of TdA, ACLU officials wrote in court documents.

The ACLU claims Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act is invalid because the TdA gang is not a “foreign nation or government,” and there has been no “invasion or predatory incursion” — both of which are required to invoke the act.

“Criminal activity does not meet the longstanding definitions of those statutory requirements,” ACLU officials said in the lawsuit. “Thus, the government’s attempt to summarily remove Venezuelan noncitizens exceeds the wartime authority that Congress delegated in the AEA.”

In addition to Trump, the Colorado lawsuit names U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the Denver Field Office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Robert Gaudian and Denver Contract Detention Facility warden Dawn Ceja.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Miles Harford’s guilty plea in Denver follows years of other gruesome funeral home cases in Colorado, including one where the owners were accused of storing nearly 200 bodies in a decrepit building and giving families fake cremated remains.

Harford, 34, faced a dozen counts including forgery, theft and four counts of abuse of a corpse, which prosecutors described as treating bodies or remains “in a way that would outrage normal family sensibilities.”

The plea agreement dismisses the rest of the counts, but the judge said the agreement requires that all victims be named within the two charges Harford pleaded guilty to, and that he would be liable for restitution including for the dismissed counts.

Harford was arrested a year ago after the body of a woman named Christina Rosales, who died of Alzheimer’s at age 63, was found in the back of a hearse, covered in blankets, along with cremated remains of other people stashed throughout Harford’s rental property, including in the crawlspace.

Harford is represented by lawyers from the state public defender’s office, which does not comment on its cases to the media.

There were no other details in the court hearing on the charges, including how much money was taken from victims or how corpses were abused.

The funeral home cases over the years prompted lawmakers to pass sweeping new regulations of the funeral home industry in Colorado last year, which previously had little oversight.

The sentencing is scheduled for June 9.

___

Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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GOLDEN — Katharine Decker set a bagged rock about the size of a cantaloupe in front of the jury with a heavy thump Monday.

This rock, Jefferson County’s chief deputy district attorney told the jurors, is the rock that killed 20-year-old Alexa Bartell. The defendant, Joseph Koenig, threw it through her windshield two years ago and he is guilty of murder, Decker said during opening statements in Koenig’s trial.

“This rock blew through her head like a cannon,” she said, noting the fatal attack was one of several in an ongoing spree that night.

Koenig is guilty, his attorneys conceded in their own opening statements — but not of first-degree murder. The then-18-year-old didn’t intend to hurt anyone that night, defense attorney Thomas Ward said. He and two other teenagers didn’t think at all about the potential danger of hurling rocks at other drivers. They thought only about hitting cars, not people.

“All three of the boys in that truck are guilty of causing Alexa Bartell’s death,” Ward told jurors. “We are not running from that. But the evidence will show Alexa Bartell’s death, as tragic as it was, was not first-degree murder.”

Koenig’s jury trial started Monday in Jefferson County District Court, where the 20-year-old is charged with first-degree murder, nine counts of attempted murder, three counts of assault, six counts of attempted assault. He faces life in prison if he is convicted of first-degree murder.

Ward suggested jurors should find Koenig guilty only of the lesser offense of manslaughter. He said Koenig’s mental state that night didn’t match what is legally required for a first-degree murder conviction.

Koenig is accused of carrying out a series of attacks in which he and two other teenagers threw rocks and objects at passing cars, including one attack on April 19, 2023, that killed Bartell. Koenig and other teenagers threw at least 10 objects at cars on at least three different nights between February and April 2023, prosecutors allege.

“The defendant’s attacks were frequent, the defendant’s targets were focused, the defendant’s weapons were fatal,” Decker said.

She showed photos of cars damaged in the spree. Some had rock-sized holes in their windshield, or smashed bumpers or crushed side mirrors.

Prosecutors say Koenig threw the rock through Bartell’s windshield as the two vehicles passed each other around 10:45 p.m. on Indiana Street near the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Koenig’s defense team alleges it was another teenager in the car who threw the fatal rock.

Legally, all three teenagers can be held convicted of causing Bartell’s death regardless of who threw the rock, both prosecutors and defense attorneys told jurors.

Koenig’s is the only case to go to trial. The other two teenagers in the car that night have pleaded guilty and are expected to testify during Koenig’s trial.

Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik, 20, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in 2024 and faces up to 72 years in prison. Zachary Kwak, 20, pleaded guilty days later to assault and attempted assault and faces between 20 and 32 years in prison.

Neither Karol-Chick nor Kwak have been sentenced; their sentencings are set for early May. Their plea deals are contingent on their cooperation with Koenig’s prosecution.

All three teenagers were arrested after cellphone data tied them to the crime scene. All were 18 at the time. The trio treated the attacks like a game, court records show. They turned around to take a photo of Bartell’s smashed car as a memento, prosecutors said.

“As the defendant literally blows her brains out, he whoops,” Decker said. “He says ‘Holy (expletive)’ as this rock deposits part of her brain tissue on the side of the road.”

Ward told jurors the teenagers threw rocks at cars after a night of ongoing pranks that escalated from shoplifting and throwing rocks at parked cars to throwing rocks at moving cars as the teenagers tried to one-up each other.

“It was stupid and immature, but not one of these three boys thought that they would use the rocks to hurt people,” Ward said. He called the first-degree murder charge “inflated.”

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“You going to prison isn’t going to make you a decent person, you going to prison isn’t going to bring back our son,” said Sally Glass, Christian’s mother, addressing the table where former Clear Creek County sheriff’s deputy Andrew Buen sat. “…But you’ve done so much damage, and you must not be able to get away with it.”

Sally Glass choked on her words throughout her speech to the judge during the Monday morning sentencing hearing, fighting back tears. At times, she completely stopped speaking to breathe deeply and compose herself, allowing silence to fill the courtroom.

Buen was convicted in February of criminally negligent homicide in the 2022 killing of Christian Glass after his first trial ended with the jury deadlocked on a murder charge. He was also convicted of reckless endangerment in that initial jury trial.

During the Monday morning hearing, Clear Creek County District Court Judge Catherine Cheroutes gave Buen the maximum possible sentence: three years in the Colorado Department of Corrections for the homicide charge and 120 days in jail for the reckless endangerment charge. The sentences will be served concurrently.

“Mr. Buen killed Christian Glass, and that deserves punishment,” Cheroutes said. “There’s no question in my mind that that is appropriate. … This was about power. This wasn’t a mistake.”

Cheroutes said the sentence needed to address “the needs of the victims and the community” while also serving as an example and promoting respect for the law.

Still, the maximum sentence doesn’t feel like enough and pales in comparison to the years Buen stole from his son, Christian’s father, Simon Glass, said.

“What a waste, what a terrible waste,” Simon Glass said.

He said the family is still struggling to come to terms with his son’s death and that talking about his son in the past tense feels “completely alien, like someone else is speaking.”

Simon Glass also struggled to complete his testimony before Cheroutes during the hearing. He said all of his once-happy memories of his son had been infused with pain — not just from the shooting, but from the drawn-out legal process and multiple trials.

“This entire trial has been incredibly difficult for all of us,” said Katie Glass, Christian’s sister. “I am not the same person I was before. I have anxiety attacks, I have depression, I can’t live my life like I used to be able to. And I just miss him.”

Buen shot and killed Christian Glass on June 10, 2022, after the 22-year-old called 911 for help when his car got stuck on a rock in Clear Creek County. Glass, who had marijuana and amphetamine in his system, was experiencing a mental health crisis and told dispatchers he was afraid of “skinwalkers” and people chasing him.

“He died terrified, in pain and all alone,” Katie Glass said. “That’s what hurts me the most.”

Seven law enforcement officers responded to Glass’s 911 call and spent more than an hour trying to coax him out of the car while he was experiencing delusions and paranoia. Eventually, Buen decided to break Glass’s window and pull him from the vehicle.

When officers broke the window, Glass grabbed a knife and officers fired a Taser at him and shot him with beanbags in an attempt to force him to drop it. Instead, Glass twisted in the driver’s seat and thrust the knife toward an officer standing next to the shattered window behind him, prompting Buen to shoot Glass five times. Glass then stabbed himself several times.

A separate grand jury investigation into the incident in 2022 found Glass had committed no crime, had acted in panic and self-defense before he was killed and had never actually come close to stabbing the officers. The involved law enforcement agencies agreed to a $19 million settlement with Glass’s parents in May.

Buen was fired after he was indicted.

“Christian deserved better, you all deserved better,” Buen said during the sentencing hearing, standing before the court in his orange prison jumpsuit. “This is something I have to live with.”

He said there were a million things he could have done better that night and he wishes that he had done differently.

Simon Glass called out the grief displayed by Buen, his attorney and his supporters as performative. He said the former deputy has continually shown “a complete lack of remorse throughout the trial.” Buen and his attorney insisted the regret was genuine.

The former deputy said that every time he speaks with his family, they talk about their favorite memories and time together.

“I can’t imagine sharing those moments and having the person that they’re about be gone,” Buen said.

Buen’s sister, Jennifer, said she’s had to deal with the “unbearable pain of watching your brother slip away.”

She and her daughter, Abigail, told the judge that Andrew Buen changed after the 2022 shooting. They said he was “beyond broken and hurt” and became distanced.

Buen’s mother and close friends also testified on behalf of the ex-deputy, asking the court for “mercy.”

Judge Cheroutes said she truly believed the group’s statements about Buen, that he is a kind, gentle and loyal person, but she said that all changed once he was in uniform and armed.

She said law enforcement officers must remember that they are public servants and their duty is not to violate their oath to serve and protect.

“And that is exactly what happened in this case,” she said.

Andrew Buen’s supervisor, former Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kyle Gould, was not there during the incident but permitted Buen to break into Glass’s car. Gould pleaded guilty to failing to intervene in the excessive force of another officer in 2023 and was sentenced to two years of probation.

An additional four law enforcement officers face charges of failing to intervene in the excessive force of another officer; their criminal cases are pending.

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Shannon McShane, 57, pleaded guilty to one count of retaliation against a victim or witness, one count of attempting to influence a public servant and one count of perjury, according to a news release. Seven counts of attempting to influence a public servant and five counts of forgery were dismissed in the plea deal.

“We take fraud, and efforts to undermine the integrity of our judicial process, seriously,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement. “The defendant’s actions created real harm, and this plea agreement holds her accountable.”

McShane was indicted by a state grand jury in October for allegedly lying about having a doctorate in psychology from the University of Hertfordshire in England. The university had no record of McShane being a student there, according to the news release.

She used that fake Ph.D. to obtain a psychologist license and certification as an addiction counselor from the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies and worked on child custody cases, according to the attorney general’s office.

McShane will be sentenced June 23, according to the release.

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A jury on Tuesday convicted Levi Miller, 34, on two counts of attempted first-degree murder after deliberation, two counts of first-degree assault and four counts of attempted first-degree murder with extreme indifference, according to a news release from Weld County District Attorney’s Office.

Weld County Judge Audrey Galloway sentenced Miller to 156 years in prison on Wednesday.

Miller was arrested in 2021 after he fired more than 30 rounds at two police officers who were responding to a domestic dispute call at Miller’s home in the 1200 block of Aspen Court in Eaton on Sept. 24, 2021. Officers fired back at Miller, who was armed with an MK47 rifle with a 100-round drum magazine, prosecutors said.

Eight rounds hit a neighbor’s house while Miller was firing at officers, with one bullet striking a gas line and seven others hitting the wall of a bedroom where two children slept, according to the news release. Miller was struck in the shootout and taken to a local hospital.

Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke determined the officers were justified in their use of force and cleared them in November 2021 for firing back at Miller, according to the news release.

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Particles from the sandy ground of a courtyard in the West African nation where the military officer fell during one of the 2006 beatings lodged in his eyes, causing damage requiring several surgeries, he testified.

Sanyang, a former military officer in Gambia, took the stand in U.S. District Court in Denver against one of the former soldiers he said beat him — Michael Sang Correa.

Correa is on trial in after being indicted in 2020 under a rarely used law that allows people to be prosecuted in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.

He is charged with torturing Sanyang and four others and being part of a conspiracy to torture alleged coup plotters while serving with the Junglers, a military unit that reported directly to former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh.

Sanyang told jurors he eventually agreed to sign a false confession but wiped blood from his head onto the paper to show he had been tortured. Then, after refusing to confess on television, he was shocked with wires plugged into a wall socket and beaten again, he said.

Bleeding, he read his confession for the television camera, but only the audio was recorded to conceal the torture, he told the court.

“I had to save my body,” Sanyang said of why he agreed to confess, adding he did not join the failed insurrection against Jammeh, who ousted the previous president of Gambia in a coup of his own in 1994.

Sanyang spent nearly a decade in prison after being convicted of treason and fled to nearby Senegal after his release.

Correa came to the U.S. to serve as a bodyguard for Jammeh in December 2016 and overstayed his visa after Jammeh was ousted in 2017, according to prosecutors. Since sometime after arriving, Correa had been living in Denver and working as a day laborer, they said.

Sanyang and other alleged victims traveled from Gambia, Europe and elsewhere in the U.S. to testify this week about their torture. Prosecutors showed the jury photos of victims with scars left by things including a bayonet, a burning cigarette and ropes. The men were asked to circle scars on photos and explain how they received them.

Correa’s lawyers have not disputed that the defendant was involved in Sanyang’s torture even though Sanyang said Correa, like the other Junglers, was wearing a face mask. Sanyang said he knew Correa from working with him at the president’s official home and recognized his “walking gait.”

But his lawyers argue Correa was a low-ranking private who risked being tortured himself or even killed if he refused Jammeh’s orders.

Demba Dem testified Wednesday that his torturers put a black plastic shopping bag over his head and beat him as he was handcuffed.

Another time, they put a heavy bag of sand on his back and then held a piece of hot metal close to his nose. Then they hung him upside down, his wrists and ankles tied, beating him again.

The former teacher who became a member of the Gambian parliament as part of Jammeh’s political party said Correa used a stick to beat him.

Dem, who said he was not part of the planned coup, later moved to the Netherlands with his family after seeking asylum and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He was reluctant to talk on the witness stand about the impact the torture had on his life other than saying it was “very bad” and asking a prosecutor to move on.

Still, Dem said he was “happy” to be in court to try to hold one of his abusers accountable.

“I have to do it but I feel satisfied,” he said.

The trial is scheduled to continue into next week.

In 2021, a truth commission in Gambia urged that the perpetrators of crimes committed under Jammeh’s regime be prosecuted by the government. Other countries have also tried people connected with his rule.

Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity. In 2023, a German court convicted a Gambian man who was also a member of the Junglers of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the killing of government critics in Gambia.

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On April 30, 2024, Thornton police officers Tim Fuss, Marc Faivre and Scott Schilb fatally shot Joby Vigil and Jasmine Castro.

“Because of our ethical obligations requiring a reasonable likelihood of conviction, no criminal charges can or should be filed against the officers,” First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King wrote in her decision letter.

The letter stated King found only Schilb acted reasonably in his use of force and that she questioned Fuss and Faivre’s decision-making in the shooting.

In a July 2024 interview with The Denver Post, Vigil’s parents said they initially didn’t want their son’s name made public but changed their minds after seeing body-camera video that showed Vigil never was able to put his hands up.

Frank Vigil and his wife, Deanine, said they wanted all the police officers involved to lose their jobs and never work in law enforcement again.

As of Thursday, all three officers remained employed by the Thornton Police Department. An internal administrative review began this week after the decision letter was released by the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

The officers, who were driving unmarked vehicles on April 30, 2024, started following Castro’s car, in which Vigil was riding, when they noticed it didn’t have a license plate and thought it may have been stolen, according to the decision letter.

They tried to pull Castro over but turned off their emergency lights and continued to follow her when she refused to stop.

Eventually, Castro parked at a strip mall in Lakewood and shot twice at the two unmarked police cars, according to the decision letter. She then got back into the car and took off, driving at speeds close to 100 mph.

Police technology in the area recorded both gunshots, which were fired less than a second apart at about 2:59 a.m. Because of the attempted traffic stop in Thornton, the officers told investigators they believed Castro knew they were police when she shot at them.

The officers crashed into Castro’s car and ended the chase in a Lakewood residential area near Second Avenue and Garrison Street.

When Castro climbed out of the driver’s side window, Fuss saw “something black” in her hand and believed she was going to flee, the decision letter stated. He gave her one warning to put her hands up and, two seconds later, he shot at her six times with his handgun “until she was down on the ground and no longer a threat.”

Schilb also shot at Castro eight times with his rifle when she was already on the ground, according to the letter. He said he saw a gun near her waistband and thought she would still be able to use it.

Neither Fuss nor Schilb verbalized that they saw a gun.

Since Castro, when climbing out of the car, landed on her hands and knees and turned away from Fuss as she stood, King said Fuss’ perception that she “intended imminent serious bodily injury or death” to the group “was unreasonable.”

She said Schilb, who was on the other side of Castro, acted reasonably, and a reasonable person confronted with the same facts and circumstances would also believe deadly force was necessary to subdue the suspect.

“Of the three officers who engaged with the (car) that night, Officer Faivre’s decision-making is the most problematic,” King wrote in the decision letter.

Faivre never saw the gun or Castro’s and Vigil’s hands, she wrote. Instead, he shot at them 11 times as they moved away from him and climbed out the driver’s side window of the crashed car.

Faivre is the only officer who shot at Vigil, striking him in the head, back and legs, according to the decision letter. All three officers shot at Castro, who was hit in her legs, wrist, arms, shoulder, chest, abdomen and back.

“Unlike the other officers, Officer Faivre had no additional information after the crash, other than the occupants franticly reaching around the car, to justify his own use of deadly force,” King wrote. “Faivre did not see or know about a black object, did not see a firearm and could not articulate where he was shooting.”

King said she believed Faivre’s use of force was not reasonable. Still, she didn’t think a jury would convict any officer as they could all claim self-defense.

Thornton Police Department officials said the three officers will remain on administrative duty while the internal review progresses.

“As is standard protocol, the department has now initiated an internal administrative review to assess whether the officers’ actions were in compliance with Thornton Police Department policies and procedures,” the police department said in an emailed statement to The Post. “… We recognize the emotional toll this incident has had on all those involved, and we are dedicated to doing everything we can to help heal and move forward together as a community.”

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