Category: US

DENVER — A recount has confirmed that an indicted Colorado county clerk who alleged voting fraud lost the primary election she ran in last month in her attempt to win the post of running the state’s elections, officials announced Thursday.

The results barely changed, with Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters picking up 13 more votes in the recount of the votes cast in the June 28 election to determine the Republican candidate for secretary of state. Peters received about 29% of the vote, Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement.

The winner of the GOP primary for the job of overseeing Colorado’s elections, Pam Anderson, received 13 more votes during the recount and finished with 43%. A third candidate, Mike O’Donnell, got 11 more votes.

Peters’ voicemail was full and she did not immediately return a text message or emails seeking comment on the recount results.

She filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Griswold and the state’s county clerks alleging the recount was not conducted according to state law. The lawsuit claims that the accuracy of randomly selected machines used to count ballots should have been verified with a hand count before the recount began.

Griswold’s office said in a statement that the lawsuit was meritless.

“The allegations in the lawsuit are based on debunked conspiracies that have been rejected by judges in previous cases. The recount is over and was conducted under Colorado election law and rule,” the statement said.

Peters faces several felony charges for her alleged role in allowing unauthorized people to break into her county’s election system in search of proof of the conspiracy theories spun by former President Donald Trump after his 2020 election loss.

She has denied she did anything illegal and contains the charges are politically motivated. She has issued reports purporting to show suspicious activity within voting systems, but those have been debunked by various officials and experts.

A judge prohibited Peters from overseeing last year’s and this year’s local elections in Mesa County, a western region of the state that is largely rural and heavily Republican. Trump lost Colorado in 2020 but won the majority of the vote in this county.

Peters’ margin of loss in the GOP secretary of state primary did not require an automatic recount but she raised more than the $256,000 required to pay for one, reportedly mostly from supporters outside the state after making a plea for help on Steve Bannon’s podcast.

During the recount, 37 ballots that had been filled out and returned by voters were discovered in a bin with ballots returned as undeliverable that were being prepared for storage in Elbert County, which is near Denver.

Those ballots were opened and counted for the first time during the recount but did not change the results of any race, the secretary of state’s office said.

A breakdown of county recount results provided by Griswold’s office showed that there were also some small changes in ballot tallies in other counties that changed the vote results.

Three family members killed during a shooting last month at an eastern Iowa state park were shot, stabbed and/or strangled, according to autopsy results released Thursday.

Tyler Schmidt, 42, died from a gunshot wound and “multiple sharp force injuries,” while his wife, 42-year-old Sarah Schmidt, died from multiple sharp force injuries, the Iowa Department of Public Safety said in a news release. Their 6-year-old daughter, Lula Schmidt, died from a gunshot wound and strangulation, officials said.

All three family members’ deaths have been ruled homicides. The Schmidts’ 9-year-old son, who was with his family on the camping trip, survived the attack without physical injuries, but investigators have not said whether he was in the tent when the attack happened.

The department confirmed Thursday that the killer was Anthony Sherwin, 23, of LaVista, Nebraska, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the family was attacked early on the morning of July 22 in their tent at the Maquoketa Caves State Park campground. Sherwin was at the park camping with his parents at the time of the attack, according to police and Sherwin’s mother.

IOWA MAN SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS IN PRISON FOR ROLE IN DEADLY SHOOTING

A photo of Tyler and Sarah Schmidt sits on a podium at the Celebration of Life event for Tyler, Sarah, and Lula Schmidt, held at Overman Park in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The Schmidts were shot and killed at Maquoketa Caves State Park on July 22 .
(Chris Zoeller/The Courier via AP)

Investigators said all evidence collected substances that Sherwin acted alone, but police have not revealed a motive for the killings. Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Department of Public Safety’s division of criminal investigation, said Thursday that investigators “have indications as to what the motive was,” but don’t plan to release that information.

Police who swarmed the park about 180 miles east of Des Moines in the wake of the shooting found Sherwin’s body outside the campground but within a wooded area of ​​the park.

Sherwin’s mother, Cecilia Sherwin, told The Associated Press in the days after the shooting that she and her husband were devastated by attack on the Schmidts and by the loss of their son, whom she described as kind, sensitive, an exceptional student and an aspiring businessman.

Cecilia Sherwin said in an email Sunday to the AP that her family had recently made the decision to become gun owners only after a number of recent crimes and disturbances while camping previously.

“Neither I, my husband, nor Anthony had any experience with handguns before this year,” she said. “We took classes and joined a range. Anthony was very responsible and showed no interest in hurting anyone and never hurt an animal in his life from him.”

THIRD VICTIM OF IOWA NIGHTCLUB SHOOTING DIES

A memorial to celebrate the lives of the Schmidts was held Tuesday in their hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa, drawing about 200 people.

Police in Fairfax County, Virginia, released body-worn camera footage of an officer fatally shooting a 26-year-old man in McLean last month, saying it shows a “very active and chaotic incident” the department is continuing to investigate.

County police responded to two 911 calls from a house on Arbor Lane in McLean on July 8 for a report of a man having a mental health crisis. When police entered the front door of the house on their second visit, the video shows 26-year-old Jasper Aaron Lynch pacing, then throwing a decorative wooden mask at officers and running toward them with a wine bottle. Two officers deployed their Tasers, and one of the officers fired his weapon, striking Lynch four times.

The shooting is the subject of a criminal investigation by the department’s Major Crimes Bureau in cooperation with the Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office. The police department is also conducting an internal investigation.

“On the occasions when police officers use deadly force, it’s always profoundly sad…. And because a police use of deadly force was involved, we, again, take it very seriously,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said during a news conference Thursday.

“This one is gonna take a little bit longer to assess and investigate,” than other police shootings, Davis said. “Some are more clear than others; this one isn’t exactly as sterile because there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot going on that the camera captures, and there’s a lot going on that our investigation will concentrate on that’s not within the view of the cameras.”

While the investigation is still ongoing, Davis said he would refrain from offering his opinion or assessment of the officers’ actions. But in response to a reporter’s question, he said the video shows the officers attempted to verbally de-escalate the situation by using Lynch’s first name to address him and by telling him to drop the objects in his hands and then using their Tasers, unless -than-lethal option, before shots were fired.

The Lynch family released a statement shortly after the police news conference.

“Our son, Aaron, was experiencing a severe mental health crisis on July 7,” the statement from Pat and Kathy Lynch stated. “He was scared and asked for both of the 911 calls that were made that day. We believe that the three police officers who answered the second 911 call could have, and should have, handled this far differently. To respond to Aaron’s mental health crisis by shooting him at all, let alone multiple times, cannot be justified. We recognize that, at times, police officers face grave and unknown dangers in the line of duty, but that was not the case for that call at our home regarding our son. Aaron was about 5′ 6,” slightly built, and holding just a bottle and a decorative mask.”

The statement went on to say: “As parents, we mourn the heartbreaking loss of our son and are left with only memories and regret. Had we known there was any possibility that the police responding to the second 911 call would use lethal force against Aaron during a mental health crisis, we would not have involved them until a mental health counselor could be present, as was the case for the response to the first 911 call. We hope our efforts to find out more about this incident will, in the future, help families in similar situations avoid such a tragic outcome.”

2 separate 911 calls

During the first 911 call to the house just after 7 pm, officers responded with a trained co-responder from the community health department. However, by the time authorities arrived, Lynch had left the house.

Shortly after 8:30 pm, a family friend called 911 a second time, saying Lynch had returned and was throwing things in the house, according to audio of the call also released by police. By that time, the single clinician who currently works with the department was completing paperwork, Davis said, and did not respond to the house with officers the second time.

The body-worn camera footage shows officers who arrived talking with Lynch’s sister in the front yard where she tells officers her brother has been struggling with his mental health and had started experiencing hallucinations and paranoid thoughts after the death of a former girlfriend.

During the earlier 911 call, the family friend told officers there were “no weapons of any kind” in the home, and in the conversation in the front yard, one of the officers tells Lynch’s sister, “We’ll help as much as we can, but we’re kind of, like, more of a last — not last resort — but we’re, like, if it’s gotten to the point where he’s going to harm himself immediately.”

A short time later, officers entered the front door of the house. When Lynch appears in the living room, officers shout at him, “Bud, put it down,” and “Aaron, you’re all right.”

Bodycam footage shows Lynch throwing the mask then approaching the officers quickly with the raised bottle. Two of the officers fire Tasers with no effect. A third officer fires his sidearm multiple times, and Lynch falls to the ground on the front porch. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

There have been five shootings involving Fairfax County police officers so far this year. There was just one last year.

Davis said the department has responded to some 6,700 calls for service involving people experiencing mental health crises — which amounts to an average of 33 a day. Less than 1% of those calls involve use of force.

The department is in the first phase of a program to expand the use of mental health clinicians as co-responders on police calls involving mental health crises. On Aug. 8, the department will transition to the second phase, which will add a second clinician. Eventually, there will be 16 clinicians working in the program.

Davis also said his department provides officers with the “gold standard” training in use-of-force and that more than 40% of officers are trained in crisis intervention techniques.

WTOP’s Kristi King contributed to this report.

Two days after the Arizona primary, the governor’s race is still too close to officially call, although Republican primary voters have Kari Lake with a slight lead over Karrin Taylor Robson. It’s the highest profile of the remaining races yet to be determined.

A big batch of vote results was scheduled to be released at 7 pm Thursday, according to the Maricopa County Elections Department.

Follow coverage of Arizona’s primary election by Republic reporters here.

Recap: Wednesday’s primary updates | Arizona primary election results 2022