The deputy was looking for a stolen vehicle in the 1400 block of East Main Street at around 5:50 p.m. and found the vehicle with two people inside, Montrose city officials said in a news release.

The driver tried to flee the scene as the deputy approached and collided with the patrol vehicle. The deputy shot at the vehicle in response, injuring one man.

City officials did not specify whether the person injured in the shooting was the driver or passenger and could not be reached for comment Monday.

The deputy was placed on administrative leave and the 7th Judicial District Critical Incident Investigation Team is investigating the shooting.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

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Nicholas Orlin and Shawn Murphy jointly sued the city and up to five unknown police officers in January 2022, seeking damages for eye and facial injuries they sustained in those incidents while protesting against police brutality on May 30, 2020. Those payments were approved as part of the Denver City Council’s consent agenda on Monday afternoon.

Both men have also received payments from the city of Aurora in the same case, according to their attorneys.

An amended version of the complaint identified Aurora police officer Cory Budaj as the person who fired the projectile that injured Orlin and Aurora police sergeant Matthew Brukbacher as the one who fired the projectile at Murphy.

Orlin and Murphy did not know each other but were both near Lincoln Park at the intersection of Colfax Avenue and Lincoln Street that evening, according to the lawsuit.

Orlin was knocked unconscious by an unknown hard projectile after covering a tear gas canister with a traffic cone, according to the suit. A short time later, Murphy was shot in the face with a hard projectile after he kicked away a tear gas canister.

In both instances, officers did not issue warnings before firing, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Both men suffered from vision problems and facial disfigurement after the incidents.

The two settlement agreements with the city of Denver designated $210,000 for Orlin and $255,000 for Murphy.

Orlin already had been granted $100,000 through a settlement with Aurora. Murphy received $175,000 from that city, according to attorney Birk Baumgartner, adding up to total compensation of $310,000 and $430,000 for the two men, respectively.

The men were jointly represented by the Denver firms Baumgartner Law and Beem & Isely. The men have dismissed individual suits against the Aurora officers.

“I wouldn’t call it justice. I would say it is absolutely accountability,” attorney Danielle Beem said of the settlements Monday.

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Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists captured the wolf on Aug. 30 and it died on Sept. 3, the agency announced Monday. Biologists had found the wolf, identified as 2309-OR, in poor condition, with several injuries to a hind leg and severely underweight, according to CPW.

“CPW staff believes that it was unlikely the wolf would have survived for very long in the wild,” the agency said in a news release.

State wildlife officials decided in August to capture the Copper Creek pack after the male wolf killed and maimed multiple cattle and sheep in the Middle Park area. The removal of the wolves from the wild was a setback for the voter-mandated effort to reintroduce the apex predator to the state’s landscape, beginning with the release of 10 wolves in the state in December.

Another of the reintroduced wolves died this spring. The state’s known wolf population now stands at 14: eight survivors among the reintroduced adults, plus the four pups from the Copper Creek pack and two adult wolves remaining from a pack established earlier by wolves that migrated from Wyoming.

The decision to recapture the pack came with risk and uncertainty, CPW Director Jeff Davis said in an interview. Wildlife officials did not want to remove the male wolf while the pups and the female wolf relied on his hunting for survival.

“We’re trying to balance the fact that we have so few animals on the landscape, and (we have) our mandate to restore a sustainable population of wolves while avoiding and minimizing impacts to the ranching industry,” he said. “There was an opportunity to remove the animals from the area of conflict, kind of reassess what the next steps are.”

An outside agency will investigate the cause of death of the male wolf and release a report, Davis said. He expected the investigation to take between 45 and 60 days.

The rest of the recaptured Copper Creek pack — a female wolf and four pups, one more than previously known — were captured and will be held in a facility for eventual rerelease.

The pups were underweight but otherwise healthy and taken with their mother to a “large, secure enclosure with limited human interaction,” according to CPW.

Citing a concern for the safety of the wolves, Davis declined to provide more details about the facility — including whether the facility is public or private and whether it is in Colorado.

Rerelease planned later in fall

The agency plans to release the remaining pack together between mid-November and December, once the pups have reached adult size, Davis said. Biologists will collar the pups before release, he said.

The pack will be released within the same broad area where the wolves were set loose in December, Davis said. The zone stretches north to south between Kremmling and Aspen, and east to west between Loveland Pass and Rifle.

CPW officials will speak with local elected officials and landowners in possible release areas before it occurs, according to the agency.

Davis and other CPW officials began discussing the possibility of removing and relocating the Copper Creek pack in early August, he said. The agency announced its decision to capture the pack five days after the operation was underway.

CPW began attempts to capture the pack on Aug. 22. Its biologists captured the wolves using leg-hold traps over the next two weeks, in this order:

• Aug. 24: adult female, 2312-OR
• Aug. 30: adult male, 2309-OR
• Tuesday: male pup, 2401
• Wednesday: male pups, 2403 and 2405
• Thursday: female pup, 2402

Wildlife officials continued to work in the area until Sunday to ensure all pups were captured.

“After three more days of operations, CPW felt confident there were no additional pups on the landscape,” according to the agency’s news release.

CPW veterinarians do not believe the leg-hold trap caused the injury to the now-deceased male wolf’s leg, Davis said.

The leg had puncture wounds high on the inside of the back right leg, which a leg-hold trap could not inflict on an adult wolf, Davis said. That leg was atrophied and the hair on the paw had grown long, indicating that the foot had not been used regularly for a long time, Davis said. Veterinarians administered antibiotics to the captured wolf to treat infection from the wound.

State deviated from its own plan

CPW’s wolf management plan states that relocating wolves to halt depredations “has little technical merit,” since the wolves could return to their previous territory or simply start killing livestock in their new area.

Davis acknowledged that the relocation decision strayed from the plan, but he said it was a necessary choice when trying to balance the mandate to restore wolves and also “take a little bit of steam or temperature out of the ranching community by removing the conflict.”

The majority of the 24 cattle and sheep killed and maimed by wolves since reintroduction were attacked by the paired wolves that formed the Copper Creek pack, CPW officials previously said.

“This isn’t necessarily exactly what our plan says, but this is a little bit of a perfect storm event, so it requires some flexibility and unique solutions going forward,” Davis said.

The four pups had not been involved with the livestock but were approaching the age when they would begin hunting with the adults, Davis said. It’s unclear whether the female wolf has killed or injured any cattle or sheep, he said.

Had the male wolf survived, he would have been held in captivity permanently, CPW officials said at news conference Monday afternoon.

While it is difficult to digest the death of the male wolf, the relocation was the best option for CPW at the time, said Rob Edward, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, which supported reintroduction. Now that the pack has been relocated, CPW can pivot to focusing more on preventing depredation by coordinating earlier with ranches that have a wolf presence nearby.

CPW also can make sure ranchers have easy access to nonlethal deterrents, he said.

“Now we can turn our attention to why CPW had to relocate these wolves — and what they can do better as they implement the will of the voters,” Edward said.

Despite the death of two of the 10 animals released in December, CPW officials remain optimistic that the reintroduction program will succeed.

“I’m not concerned about the overall success of the program,” Eric Odell, CPW’s wolf conservation program manager, said during the news conference.

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The alert is planned for 11 a.m. Thursday. The test will be sent to all mobile devices located within the city and county of Denver, regardless of where the phones are registered or if they have out-of-area phone numbers. State and local tests are not enabled by default, however, so users will need to turn it on their phones’ settings to receive it.

The test is being timed in recognition of National Preparedness Month and is being conducted by the Denver Office of Emergency Management. The alerts are designed to send warnings about imminent dangers, including severe weather, public safety and other local emergencies. The test alert should be clearly marked as such.

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The Double Play ticket for the March 23 Powerball drawing is set to expire on Sept. 19 after the 180-day window for winners to claim their prize, state officials said in a news release Monday.

The ticket was sold at the King Soopers at 8031 Wadsworth Blvd.

The winning ticket matched all five numbers – 18-24-43-46-47 – but missed the Powerball.

If no one claims the winnings, the money will go toward funding Colorado’s parks, recreation, open space and wildlife preservation projects.

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The Wisconsin Department of Health Services said in a statement Friday that among those infected by salmonella are 42 people in Wisconsin, where the eggs are believed to have been sold.

“The eggs were distributed in Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan through retail stores and food service distributors,” the department said. “The recall includes all egg types such as conventional cage-free, organic, and non-GMO, carton sizes, and expiration dates in containers labeled with ‘Milo’s Poultry Farms’ or ‘Tony’s Fresh Market.’”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed in a statement on its website that 65 people in nine states were infected by a strain of salmonella, with 24 hospitalizations and no deaths as of Friday. The states include Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, Utah and California, the agency said.

One case has been reported in Colorado to date, according to the CDC.

The egg recall was undertaken by Milo’s Poultry Farms LLC of Bonduel, Wisconsin, the CDC said.

“Anyone who purchased the recalled eggs is advised to not eat them or cook with them and to throw them away. Restaurants should not sell or serve recalled eggs,” the Wisconsin health department said.

The department advised anyone who ate the eggs and is experiencing symptoms to contact a health care provider. Symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever and vomiting lasting for several days, the statement said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture in July announced new measures to limit salmonella in poultry products. The proposed directive included requiring poultry companies to keep salmonella levels under a certain threshold and test for the presence of six particularly sickening forms of the bacteria, three found in turkey and three in chicken.

Bacteria exceeding the proposed standard and identification of any of the strains would prevent poultry sales and leave the products subject to recall.

The CDC estimates salmonella causes 1.35 million infections annually, most through food, and about 420 deaths. The Agriculture Department estimates there are 125,000 infections from chicken and 43,000 from turkey each year.

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One minute, the 4-year-old boy was giggling. The school’s new behavioral specialist made a game of helping him put on his shoes, playfully sniffing them then scrunching up her face in pretend horror.

A minute later, he was inconsolable, an emotional U-turn perhaps sparked by the transition to clean-up time. A teacher cradled the boy in her lap, calmly dodging his small flailing arms. He quieted when he got his pacifier and the shield of a cozy blanket over his head.

Such scenes — of young children struggling to cope — have become more commonplace in Colorado and nationwide as a generation of babies and toddlers whose early life was marked by the pandemic now enter preschool and kindergarten. Experts say many of these children carry more emotional baggage than their predecessors, owing to the stress that coursed through families as isolation, unemployment, sickness, and grief took their toll.

“Any child who was impacted by the pandemic during their first three years of life is bound to have something lingering,” said Karen Wolf, mental health manager at Clayton Early Learning in Denver, where the boy cried under the blanket.

More of Colorado’s pandemic babies and toddlers are showing up with developmental delays than their counterparts born just a few years before. In 2019, about 9,000 children from birth to 3 years old were eligible for free state services because of development delays. By 2023, that number jumped 17% to about 10,600.

There’s also a group of young children who don’t have official delays, but missed out on basic social skills when preschool and playdates stopped during the pandemic. Preschool enrollment in Colorado’s public schools dropped by more than 20% during the 2020-21 school year compared with the year before, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

Early educators say they’re seeing more children who struggle with speech, communication, and managing their emotions than in years past. More students also now struggle with classroom expectations. Jennifer Lussier, a kindergarten teacher at Coyote Ridge Elementary in Broomfield, said a couple years into the pandemic she experienced an unfortunate first: A kindergartner told her, “I’m not doing that. That’s stupid.”

Some teachers and advocates say it’s hard to untangle the effects of COVID from other factors, such as children’s frequent use of smartphones and tablets — a phenomenon exacerbated by the pandemic.

Many schools and child care centers are working to meet students’ extra needs. They’ve added more teacher training or hired new staff to work with children who hit, bite, or have tantrums. They devote more class time to social-emotional skills and call in mental health specialists when big problems erupt.

But some worry that chronic industry problems, including a shortage of therapists who work with young children, high turnover among early childhood educators, and a lack of funding for the field at large, are stunting recovery efforts.

The demands on preschool teachers and daycare workers have grown even as their resources have shrunk, said Lori Ganz, clinical director of The Resource Exchange, which provides early childhood services in El Paso County and nearby counties.

“Their classrooms are larger and the children are more challenging,” Ganz said, “and some days they just can’t do it.”

New parents in pandemic faced an uncertain world

Chmura Smith was in her last semester of community college when the pandemic hit. She was also pregnant with her first child.

“The pandemic kind of shut down my whole life,” she said.

Classes moved online, a format Smith didn’t like. She remembers a chronic feeling of uncertainty. She worried about “getting COVID and it never going away and always being in lockdown.”

A few days after her May graduation, she went into labor much too early. Her son Jadon was just two pounds and two ounces when he was born. He came home healthy after two months in the hospital, but as he grew, he struggled to pronounce words and would sometimes stutter. He’ll say things like “Gween Gwoblin” when talking about his favorite Spider-Man villain.

Jadon, now 4, has a special education plan and gets speech therapy at Clayton Early Learning, where he attends preschool. His 3-year-old brother, born full-term as the world was opening back up in 2021, never had any speech problems.

For Smith, it’s hard to pinpoint the reason for Jadon’s speech delay. She said her own stress during the pandemic could have sparked his premature birth, which in turn could have contributed to his speech problems.

“That year was a lot,” she said.

Erin and JK Perry, who live in the western Colorado town of Eagle, also wonder about the effects of the pandemic on their 4-year-old son. In so many ways, he’s thriving. He’s an outgoing child with a big vocabulary and good friends.

But he also struggles with anxiety at times — for example, if his parents switch off who’s bringing him to preschool without telling him.

“He will yell. He will refuse to eat his breakfast. He will refuse to put his shoes on,” Erin Perry said.

“I feel like some of that could have been me and JK and just the levels of anxiety we were dealing with,” she said. “It wasn’t just being new parents. It was being new parents in a pandemic. It was like being scared to go to the grocery store.”

Erin Perry said teachers at their son’s child care center talked of behavior post-COVID that they’d never seen before. When their son was 2, one teacher was responsible for shadowing a toddler in the class who continuously acted out. When that teacher turned her back momentarily, the toddler bit their son hard enough to draw blood, she said.

Fewer young children flagged for extra help

During the first year of the pandemic, thousands of babies and toddlers with delays or disabilities missed out on services that would have helped them catch up. They weren’t going to the routine doctor appointments or to child care where professionals might have noticed an issue and referred them for a free state evaluation.

In addition, Colorado temporarily raised the bar in 2020 for the level of delay children needed to receive early intervention services because of a budget shortfall. A version of the earlier threshold was reinstated in 2023.

To make matters worse, early intervention services switched to virtual as the pandemic raged. Some families opted out all together, while others tried them but struggled to realize the benefits. A lag in getting kids set up with therapies and other services can compound their problems, experts say.

Lussier, the kindergarten teacher in Broomfield, said before the pandemic she typically had one or two children with delays in her classroom, but now it’s often double that.

She recalled a boy in her class last year who spoke only in short phrases like, “Bathroom, bathroom. I use bathroom.” Once, she told the boy, “Put your name on your paper.” He looked at her in bewilderment. He didn’t understand that she was asking him to write his name.

A nationwide study conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers and published this year found modest decreases in screening scores for three developmental areas for children from birth to age 5 during the first two years of the pandemic compared with children the same age before the pandemic. They include communication, problem-solving and personal-social, which includes skills like feeding and dressing.

Researchers said the findings were generally reassuring in the short term and “suggest reason for cautious optimism.” But they warned that more kids with delays could tax the already overburdened system. They noted that the additional deficits translate to about 1,500 more children nationwide being referred for developmental delay evaluations each month.

Classrooms problems aren’t always due to developmental delays

Early educators and mental health specialists say there’s also a growing group of young children who don’t have developmental delays or disabilities, but struggle with classroom norms.

Early in the pandemic, when fewer kids attended child care and preschool — and many adults were constantly sanitizing — some children missed out on the sights, sounds, and textures of a normal classroom: The jumble of classmates finger-painting, playing in sandboxes, and shaping Play-Doh.

When children eventually did experience those things for the first time, it was often overwhelming.

“A typical scenario is a kid who’s pushing and shoving the kids in the line, and it’s because they can’t handle the sensation of touch with other people close to them because they’ve not experienced that before,” said Ganz, of The Resource Center.

Anna Clark, a kindergarten teacher in Cottonwood Elementary in the western Colorado city of Montrose, used to take out a box of fidget toys occasionally when a child needed a calming activity. Now, the box is always out because so many children need sensory breaks.

Taryn Long, who evaluates children ages 3 to 5 to see if they qualify for special education services in the Brighton-based District 27J, said since the pandemic, more children are being referred for evaluations because of “behavior.” Perhaps they pushed a classmate at child care, hit a teacher, or had a meltdown.

“They’re getting kicked out left and right. All sorts of write-ups,” said Long.

But often such children don’t qualify for special education because they are doing fairly well in some ways, she said. They can follow directions, answer questions, and know colors or parts of the body, for example.

Long, and other professionals who work with young children, say some of the struggles young kids have experienced are because in the thick of the pandemic they didn’t have regular interactions with other children and were on screens more than ever.

Parents told Long, “We couldn’t go to the park. The park was taped off. All they had was us.”

Clark, echoing concerns raised by other educators, believes constant stimuli from screens has made it harder for children to enjoy simple things, partake in imaginative play, and even hone their fine motor skills.

With all the one-finger swiping, she said, “They’re not pinching their fingers to turn pages in a book or a magazine as often, and so it kind of just all escalates into these deficits we’ve been seeing.”

Educators say children’s development ‘not a lost cause’

Some early educators say young children today need more practice and more time to pick up key social and emotional skills they would typically learn before kindergarten. Even with early setbacks, children are adaptable and resilient.

“It’s a magical time,” said Wolf, of Clayton Early Learning. “We can have so much good impact still. It’s not a lost cause.”

Earlier this summer, Clayton hired its new behavior specialist — a roving teacher with a background in special education — to help the growing number of preschoolers with challenging behavior. She’s the one who made a silly game of putting on the boy’s shoes.

Last year, Lussier, the kindergarten teacher in Broomfield, spent eight weeks early in the year on lessons and stories about feelings and friendships, not the usual six. She also started going over the rules of afternoon play time, like not grabbing things out of people’s hands, every day.

In the Eagle County school district, all 98 preschool teachers and assistant teachers will receive training this year on how to manage children with the most extreme behaviors — a change from the “as-needed” approach of years past.

Feedback from annual staff surveys prompted the added training, said Shelley Smith, the district’s director of early childhood programs: “It always is a need, but it grew significantly, from ‘I need more resources’ to ‘I don’t feel safe. I can’t keep the other children safe.’”

Several local early childhood leaders said they need more funding for early childhood mental health consultants, specialists who work with parents and teachers to prevent and manage challenging behavior in children.

Ganz, of the Resource Exchange, said the demand for such services far outstrips supply. Her program provides early intervention and early childhood mental health consultation to about 1,200 children at any given time in El Paso County and three nearby counties.

Her mental health consultant budget was recently cut by $300,000 after federal COVID relief funds dried up. Her program turns away five or six callers a week who want mental health consultations, she said

“Now is exactly when those children need the help,” she said. If they land on a waiting list, “we miss a window of opportunity, because for a child, six months is a very long time.”

Asked how much money she’d need to fully staff her early intervention and mental health consultant programs, she said, “We can use a magic wand of a million dollars.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Simcox was shot Saturday afternoon while doing paperwork in his marked police truck on the median of U.S. 36 just west of Federal Boulevard in Westminster. Simcox returned fire and killed the assailant, according to law enforcement. Simcox was taken to Denver Health, where he was treated and released that afternoon.

The shooter, a man who was driving a black Chevrolet pickup truck, has not been publicly identified.

His name will be released by the Adams County Coroner’s Office, said Trooper Gabriel Moltrer. The shooting is still under investigation as investigators look into a possible motive and interview Simcox.

The coroner’s office could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.

People with information about the shooting can contact Colorado State Patrol at 303-239-4501.

In a statement Monday morning, Gov. Jared Polis said he spoke with Simcox and he wished him a “speedy recovery.”

“Colorado thanks Cpl. Tye Simcox for his courageous and brave actions to protect himself and our community,” Polis said in the statement.

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Dozens of young athletes from Ski & Snowboard Club Vail honored her Saturday evening at Vail’s Ford Amphitheater, swarming the stage and carrying balloons — 82 of them white for her World Cup victories, eight red for her world championships medals, three gold for her Olympic medals. Vonn moved from the modest slalom hills of Minnesota to Vail when she was a girl, getting the big-mountain experience she needed to become America’s greatest female downhiller.

“I moved to Vail when I was 12 years old, along with my four siblings, and we enrolled at Ski Club Vail,” Vonn said. “It was honestly the best decision my family could have made. My journey of becoming a downhiller began (there). Without the help of Ski Club Vail, and all of those runs down Gold Peak, I don’t know if I would have won those World Cup races.”

After Vonn became the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, taking home a bronze medal in super-G as well, Vail renamed its International run Lindsey’s. International was the venue for women’s World Cup races in Vail before it built new downhill race courses at Beaver Creek.

“Renaming International to Lindsey’s was honestly one of the most meaningful things that’s happened to me,” Vonn said. “I hope to ski down it with my kids someday.”

When Vonn retired in 2019, her 82 World Cup wins were the most by a woman and only four behind Ingemar Stenmark’s record of 86. Mikaela Shiffrin, who grew up in Vail with Vonn as a role model, broke Stenmark’s record in 2023 and now stands at 97. Vonn saluted Shiffrin in her induction speech.

“Mikaela has won an insane number of World Cups, and she’s far from being done,” Vonn said. “It gives me great pride to know the next generation is reaching even higher than I was able to. I know she will inspire someone else, just like me. Congratulations to Mikaela on everything that you’ve done and will do in the future.”

Among the many locals she thanked was Dr. Tom Hackett, a prominent Vail orthopedic surgeon who helped her come back from numerous injuries.

“Even though I have my mother’s positivity, it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses,” Vonn said. “I’m grateful for everything that’s happened to me, all of the highs and all of the lows. (The lows) all taught me something very special — grit.”

Others inducted included John “Johno” McBride, a former U.S. men’s downhill coach from Aspen who was instrumental in the careers of Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves; Bjorn Erik Borgen, who helped Vail land world alpine championships in 1989, 1999 and 2015; Sigurd Rockne, a native of Norway who was a founder of the Breckenridge ski area; Ross Anderson, a Native American who grew up in Durango to become a speed skiing racer.

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The Englewood Police Department reported at about 8:30 a.m. that it received an anonymous tip of an explosive device in the building that houses Englewood High School, Middle School and Leadership Academy at 3800 S. Logan St. The school district delayed class start time until 11 a.m. and students were bused to a separate school within the district.

Law enforcement, including local sheriff’s offices and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives swept the building with the help of K-9s and found nothing suspicious, according to a post on social media. The Englewood Police Department is investigating the incident.