2 days Ago By The Gazette
From the hotly-debated opening of a major entertainment venue, to the closing of a longtime library branch, Colorado Springs saw a number of changes in 2024. In August, after months of discussion and debate — and a lawsuit by homeowners attempting to block its opening — the Ford Amphitheater opened its doors. The 8,000-seat, outdoor venue has been both a popular concert spot and a primary public talking point as city leaders work to maintain a balance between residents who enjoy the amphitheater, and nearby homeowners who see it as a noisy, invasive nuisance.
In October, the Pikes Peak Library District’s Board of Trustees announced that it would be closing its Rockrimmon branch, effective Dec. 1. The announcement was met with heated opposition from residents of the northwest region of the city and sparked a grassroots effort to keep the library open.
In response to the outpouring of public sentiment, the board held another vote in December, but the decision to close the branch was upheld. The city is poised to see a series of changes in 2025 as well. Colorado Springs will have at least three, and as many as six, new City Council members when the final votes are tallied in the April election.
Randy Helms, the sitting council president, and Mike O’Malley announced that they will not be running for reelection. Yolanda Avila will be finishing her second term on the council and cannot run again. Former (and future) President Donald Trump’s election victory had local military, political and civic leaders bracing for another fight concerning the permanent home of U.
S. Space Command. In one of his final official acts as outgoing Commander-in-Chief, Trump awarded the command to Huntsville, Ala.
– a move that was seen by many Coloradans as a punishment for not voting to reelect Trump. A prospective battle for the future of SPACECOM, will likely take place without one of the biggest advocates for keeping it in Colorado. In January, Republican U.
S. Rep. Doug Lamborn announced that he plans to retire rather than seek a 10 th term in office.
Below are more of the top stories in and around Colorado Springs in 2024: On Feb. 16, two people were found dead from gunshot wounds at a residence hall on the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus. The victims, Samuel Knopp, 24, and Celie Rain Montgomery, 26, were allegedly killed by Knopp’s roommate, Nicholas Jordan.
Jordan, 25, was arrested Feb. 19. Jordan’s arrest affidavit states that he had made a death threat against Knopp and that campus security and housing staff recorded multiple complaints about Jordan before the shooting.
The double murder was not the university’s only brush with violent death in 2024. On Aug. 7, police found the body of a UCCS professor, Haleh Abghari, who had been stabbed to death in her home.
The primary suspect in her death is also wanted for allegedly assaulting his mother. Jon Hallford, left, the Return to Nature co-owner facing hundreds of felony charges after the discovery of 189 improperly stored bodies, leaves his preliminary hearing with his lawyers Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024, outside the El Paso County Judicial Building in Colorado Springs.
(The Gazette, Christian Murdock) The court cases of Jon and Carie Hallford, co-owners of the Return to Nature Funeral Home, began in earnest in February with Jon Hallford’s preliminary hearing. The couple face hundreds of felony charges after the discovery of 189 improperly stores bodies at their Penrose location. Following the preliminary hearing, Jon Hallford was besieged by several furious family members demanding answers about the disposition of their loved ones.
The Hallfords have agreed to federal and state plea deals. Falcon resident Rebecca Lavrenz, who became known on social media as the “J6 Praying Grandma,” went on trial in March for her participation in the breach of the U.S.
Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Lavrenz, who reportedly spent about 10 minutes inside the building, said she felt called by God to protest the 2020 election results.
She was found guilty of four federal misdemeanor charges but did not receive a prison sentence. Scientists examining the streambed of Eleven Mile Canyon after the removal of a former Colorado Springs Utilities diversion dam in May learned that the 2023 project was an immediate improvement. The aim of the project was to prevent the dam from potentially failing in the future and allow rainbow and brown trout to migrate more easily.
The dam about an hour west of Colorado Springs previously split two popular fishing areas. El Paso County has been considered a national model in its efforts to decrease homelessness. But one important sector known as the chronically homeless has grown.
The subgroup refers to people who live for years or repeatedly on the streets, with many having serious mental illness, substance use disorder or a physical disability. In 2023, the number of people sleeping in tents, cars and other uninhabitable places, and who often are chronically homeless, grew by more than 100 over 2022, for a total of 374. Colorado Springs saw more than 40 smash-and-grab burglaries within city limits in 2024, impacting dozens of locally owned and operated businesses.
The exact number of robberies, which have caused thousands of dollars in property damage in addition to the merchandise lost, is difficult to quantify, in part because the Colorado Springs Police Department’s smash-and-grab statistics only include thefts committed with a vehicle (which was often stolen). Several businesses were burglarized by other methods, including breaking windows and forcing doors. Since the formal introduction of wolves took place in December 2023, a number of cattle have been attacked, confirming the fears of Coloradans who opposed the legislation.
The first known attack took place on April 2. “Six Schizophrenic Brothers,” a Max series chronicling a Colorado Springs family’s battle with psychosis, murder, incest and suicide, misrepresents schizophrenia and unfairly cast parents in an unflattering light, according to Lindsay Mary Galvin Rauch, the youngest of the Galvin siblings featured in the documentary and the bestselling nonfiction book “Hidden Valley Road.” In the forest along Independence Pass, there’s a place of bizarre, swirling rock and roaring water that captures the imagination of drivers who stop by.
This was a favorite place of Bob Lewis. “Bob was an educator all his adult life,” says a longtime friend and writer, Paul Anderson, “and he brought that to bear at the Grottos.” That’s the name of the day-use area marked along the highway close to Aspen — so named for cavernous realms cut by ancient forces and deep time.
In response to a historically low number of cadet-initiated character investigations, the Air Force Academy made changes to its honor code implementation for freshmen and sophomores. The honor code states that cadets will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do. The $20 million demolition of the Martin Drake Power Plant in downtown Colorado Springs is complete, city and utilities officials announced Thursday, Aug.
29. Excavators over the summer rolled through hulking piles of rubble that marked the site of the former Martin Drake Power Plant, where the tallest structures were taken down to ground level, including the epochal smokestacks that once peppered the Colorado Springs skyline, and removed. Before all generation was permanently shut down there in September 2022, the Martin Drake Power Plant generated electricity for nearly 100 years.
As part of the Army’s efforts to restructure its forces in preparation for large-scale war, Fort Carson bid farewell — at least, for now — to two cavalry squadrons during the summer. A unit that fought on Fort Carson’s deadliest day in Afghanistan, the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment marked its inactivation in July. The 2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment held a ceremony to case its colors — signifying the unit’s inactivation — in August.
The units both employed about 500 people, officials said. In a move that marked a change in the the pageantry of Air Force Football, the Academy announced in September that the full cadet wing would no longer be required to attend home football games, with the exceptions of the home opener and the Oct. 5 contest vs.
Navy. The Academy later adjusted its stance, requiring half the cadet wing to attend home contests. An abrupt departure of all medical providers at the CommonSpirit Vascular Surgery clinic inside Penrose Hospital has forced the office to shut down in September.
The vascular clinic on the fifth floor of Penrose Hospital at 2222 N. Nevada Ave., had employed two surgeons, two physicians’ assistants and one nurse practitioner.
The Living Word Fellowship, an international organization that took in thousands over its 70-year history and is now widely considered to have been a cult, donated a sprawling Palmer Lake compound, free and clear, to the town following Living Word’s collapse in the wake of a far-reaching sexual abuse scandal. The gift of the land and remaining buildings to the town has proven controversial — for some, bitterly so. One person died, four were injured and 23 rescued after an equipment malfunction during tours of the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine in Cripple Creek on Oct.
10, according to the Teller County Sheriff’s Office. Derrick Wilburn, a member of Academy School District 20’s board of Education, in December filed a lawsuit against district parent Bernadette Guthrie, alleging that she waged a public, multi-pronged smear campaign against him for almost a year..
