Highlights
-- Wirth had said "he was not leaving his house unless he was dead"
-- Wirth proclaimed he "wasn't afraid to take officers with him"
-- Park County authorities had considered making eviction a SWAT call, "decided it wasn't necessary"
FAIRPLAY — The Park County Sheriff’s Office knew that Martin Wirth had made a litany of threats against law-enforcement officers and considered, but ultimately rejected, making his deadly February eviction a “SWAT call,” newly released documents show.
Wirth commented that any encounter with law enforcement would become the “OK Corral.” He had also said that he wasn’t going to leave his home unless he was dead and wasn’t afraid to take law enforcement with him, according to 294 pages of documents from state investigators reviewed Wednesday by The Denver Post.
Despite the threats, Park County officials decided a SWAT operation “wasn’t necessary,” summoning instead a team of six deputies for the eviction and staging medical personnel nearby.
Capt. Mark Hancock, who oversaw the operation, told state investigators that authorities had even postponed the eviction several times to wait for better staffing levels to carry out the court order.
“I asked the guys kinda how they felt about it, because there had been talk about making it a SWAT call,” Hancock recounted to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. “But, you know, they didn’t really feel it warranted a SWAT call.”
What greeted the group of officers as they tried to remove Wirth from his Bailey home through a rammed-down door, the documents show, was a terrifying onslaught of bullets: the glint of Wirth’s rifle scope or a muzzle flash from the weapon and the screams of a deputy who had been shot several times.
The Feb. 24 encounter left Wirth and Cpl. Nate Carrigan dead and two other deputies, including Hancock, wounded. Wirth, 58, died of 11 bullet wounds, and Carrigan died of a gunshot to his chest, autopsy reports show.
The release of Colorado Bureau of Investigation documents and audio from post-event interviews and crime-scene analysis provides the first full look into the details leading up to, during and after the shootout.
Prosecutors have announced they will not file charges against any of the officers who shot Wirth that day, but the encounter has become subject of a potential lawsuit that lawyers for Carrigan’s parents and Deputy Kolby Martin — who was shot several times in his legs during the encounter — are considering.
“I don’t understand how you send deputies into a structure, to breach a structure, when you’re talking about an eviction,” attorney Don Sisson, who is representing Carrigan’s parents and Martin in the case, said this month. “It’s just such poor police tactics.”
Sheriff Fred Wegener on Wednesday, in an interview with The Post at his office in Fairplay, again defended his department’s actions.
“We had no indication that he was going to shoot,” Wegener said. “We knew there had been threats, but that doesn’t mean you turn tail and run.”
There were SWAT officers at the scene, Wegener explained, but the eviction force wasn’t a SWAT team.
Wegener added: “If we had used SWAT for an eviction, they would have said we overreacted.”
The sheriff, however, admitted there probably could have been a different tactical solution to the eviction.
“I would say Nate died a hero’s death,” Wegener said. “Now is a chance for our agency to heal.”
Leading up to the confrontation, Wirth had spent years battling mortgage companies to keep his home, but an eviction writ was issued in the days before the shooting and authorities say a notice had been posted on his door.
And three weeks before the fatal encounter, Wirth was confronted by Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies after the documents say he was denied insurance at State Farm for not having a valid driver’s license and telling the provider’s office staff he was going to get a gun and shoot the first officer he saw.
Wirth was contacted at his home on Iris Drive in Bailey by both Jefferson County and Park County officers, and he became combative at the scene.
“As we were leaving, he made the comment that he hated all cops and that he was going to have it out with law enforcement,” according to Detective Corporal Dave Leffler, who was at the scene.
The deputies serving the eviction notice were aware of this encounter but pressed forward anyway, the CBI records show. Once on scene the day of the shootout, at least two of the officers involved recounted to investigators that they worried about the tactics and positioning of officers.
Hancock said he was “uncomfortable” after Wirth was allowed to return into his home and shut himself inside after first being contacted by Carrigan that day. Carrigan was chosen to speak to Wirth first because of prior interactions between the two.
“I really feel like he’s barricading or something bad is going to happen,” Hancock told investigators, recounting the encounter.
Another deputy on scene that day, said he worried the officers were in a “fatal funnel” as they breached the house.
“I said to myself, I remember thinking is we just (expletive) ourselves,” Deputy Travis Threlkel, according to a transcript of his interview with CBI. “We’re done.”
Wirth’s brother, James, in an interview with CBI, said he wondered why a tactical team of hostage negotiators was not used during the eviction.
A paramedic at the scene, Ernie Walker, recounted to state investigators the frantic moments after gunfire erupted — finding Carrigan face down and unresponsive and Martin agonizing from a number of wounds.
“Nate was in agonal respiration without any pulses,” Walker told CBI. “We had to triage Nate and turn our attention to Kolby.”
