Survivors fled out of the back of the store to escape the bullets. For more than an hour, others hid in shelves, checkout stands and offices.

Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, then 21, surrendered after being shot in the leg by a police officer in the store, emerging wearing only his underwear and repeatedly asking officers to call his mother. His attorneys don’t dispute he was the shooter.

But why he carried out the mass shooting remains unknown as his trial is set to begin this week.

The closest thing to a possible motive revealed so far was when a mental health evaluator testified during a competency hearing last year that Alissa said he bought firearms to carry out a mass shooting and suggested that he wanted police to kill him.

Robert Olds, whose niece 25-year-old Rikki Olds was the manager Alissa fatally shot at close range near the entrance, plans to sit in his usual spot in the front row throughout the trial. While sometimes wishing Alissa had just been killed, he has held out hope that he would one day learn why his niece, known for her sense of humor and outgoing personality, and the others were killed. He has become less hopeful of that but is certain Alissa knew what was he was doing.

“I hope he goes to prison for the rest of his life, and then he’ll serve the real penalty when he has to meet God and answer for killing 10 people,” he said.

The trial is expected to focus largely on Alissa’s mental state at the time of the shooting. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his lawyers argue he should be acquitted because his mental illness prevented him from being able to tell right from wrong.

The defense argued in a court filing that his relatives said he irrationally believed he was being followed by the FBI and would talk to himself as if he was talking to someone who was not there. However, prosecutors point out Alissa was never previously treated for mental illness and was able to work up to 60 hours a week leading up to the shooting, something they say would not have been possible for someone severely mentally ill.

Alissa is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder, 15 counts of attempted murder and other offenses including having six high-capacity ammunition magazines devices banned in Colorado after previous mass shootings.

Alissa’s trial has been delayed because experts repeatedly found he was not able to understand legal proceedings and help his defense. But after Alissa improved after being forcibly medicated, Judge Ingrid Bakke ruled in October that he was mentally competent, allowing proceedings to resume.

Prosecutors will have the burden of proving he was sane, attempting to show Alissa knew what he was doing and intended to kill people in the store.

Authorities have not explained why Alissa bypassed a King Soopers near his home in the Denver suburb of Arvada and drove about 15 miles (24 kilometers) to the chain’s store in Boulder, a city he had never visited before the shooting, according to the defense.

Prosecutors have presented evidence that Alissa had researched things like how to move and shoot with an assault rifle and what kinds of bullets are the most deadly in the months before the shooting. One court document noted without elaboration that he searched for information about the “Christ Church attacks”, an apparent reference to the livestreamed shooting attacks by a white nationalist on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people in March 2019.

Alissa immigrated from Syria with his family as a toddler. He lived with his family in Arvada, where they owned a restaurant.

The only known problem Alissa had before the shooting was an incident in high school in 2018 when he was convicted of assaulting a fellow student, according to police documents. A former classmate also told The Associated Press that Alissa was kicked off the wrestling team after yelling he would kill everyone following a loss in a practice match.

A sister-in-law who lived in Alissa’s home told police that he had been playing with what she thought was a “machine gun” two days before the shooting before two relatives took it away, according to court documents.

A number of Alissa’s relatives are listed as potential witnesses for the defense during the trial. Potential jurors will be questioned starting Tuesday, with opening statements expected before the end of the week.

Both sides will rely on experts to testify about his sanity, possibly including videos of their interviews with Alissa, said defense lawyer Karen Steinhauser, a former prosecutor and University of Denver law professor.

If jurors don’t believe Alissa was legally insane, they could also consider whether his mental illness prevented him from being able to act with deliberation and intent and find him guilty of second-degree murder instead, she said.

A sanity evaluation done by experts at the state mental hospital found Alissa was legally sane at the time of the attack, according to details provided by the defense in a court hearing this spring. According to the defense, the evaluators found the attack would not have happened but for Alissa’s untreated mental illness, which attorney Sam Dunn said was schizophrenia that included “auditory hallucinations.”

Olds said he is bracing himself to learn more horrific details about the shooting, including surveillance video not previously shown in public.

But he said finally having the trial behind him will help him and many of the families to finally grieve what they’ve lost, he said.

“There’s no such thing as moving on. It’s finding other ways to live without your loved one,” he said.

DENVER (AP) — The shooter who killed five people and injured 19 others at an LGBTQ+ club that was a refuge in the conservative city of Colorado Springs pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges and was sentenced to 55 life terms in prison on Tuesday, but once again declined to apologize or say anything to the victims’ families.

Prosecutors nevertheless highlighted the importance of Anderson Lee Aldrich finally being forced to take responsibility for the hatred toward LGBTQ+ people that they say motivated the mass shooting. As part of the plea agreement, Aldrich repeatedly admitted on Tuesday to evidence of hatred.

“The admission that these were hate crimes is important to the government, and it’s important to the community of Club Q,” said prosecutor Alison Connaughty.

By targeting Club Q, Aldrich attacked a place that was much more than a bar, Connaughty added.

“It’s a special gathering place for anyone who needed community and anyone who needed that safe place,” she said. “We met people who said ‘this venue saved my life and I was able to feel normal again.’”

Aldrich, 24, is already serving life in prison after pleading guilty to state charges in the 2022 shooting last year. Federal prosecutors focused on proving that the attack at Club Q — a sanctuary for LGBTQ+ people in the mostly conservative city — was premeditated and fueled by bias.

U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney, the first openly gay federal judge in Colorado, heard heart-wrenching testimony from victims before accepting the agreement, which also includes a total of 190 years on gun charges and other counts.

“You will never get out of prison,” the judge said.

Aldrich, appearing in an orange prison uniform with head shaved and wrists handcuffed, declined to speak at the sentencing. Defense attorney David Kraut made no explicit mention of hate or bias in his comments.

Kraut said there was no singular explanation for why Aldrich carried out the shooting, but he mentioned childhood trauma, a sometimes abusive mother, online extremism, drug use and access to guns as factors that “combined to increase the risk that Anderson would engage in extreme violence.”

Defense attorneys in the state case had pushed back against hate as a motivation, arguing that Aldrich was drugged up on cocaine and medication at the time. In phone calls from jail with The Associated Press last year, Aldrich didn’t answer directly when asked whether the attack was motivated by hate, saying only, that’s “completely off base,” and ultimately pleaded no contest to the state hate crime charges, which is short of admitting guilt.

Connaughty said investigators uncovered evidence of Aldrich’s hate for the LGBTQ+ community that included two websites created by Aldrich to post hate-related content, a target found inside the defendant’s house with a rainbow ring that had bullets in it and the defendant’s sharing of recordings of 911 calls from the 2016 killing of 49 people at the gay-friendly Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida,.

Aldrich also studied other mass shootings, accumulated weapons, shared an online manifesto from a mass shooter who referred to transgenderism as a “disease,” and coordinated a spam email campaign against a former work supervisor who is gay, the prosecutor said.

According to other evidence prosecutors presented to support their sentencing recommendation, Aldrich spent over $9,000 on weapons-related purchases from at least 56 vendors between September 2020 and the attack on Nov. 19, 2022. A hand drawn map of Club Q with an entry and exit point marked was found inside Aldrich’s apartment, along with a black binder of training material entitled “How to handle an active shooter.”

Defense attorneys in the state case said Aldrich is nonbinary, and uses they/them pronouns. But that was rejected by some of the victims as well as the district attorney who prosecuted Aldrich in state court, who called it an effort to avoid hate crime charges.

They include Ashtin Gamblin, who worked the front door that night and remains in physical therapy after being shot nine times. A true member of the LGBTQ+ community would know about the discrimination and the mental health challenges they face and wouldn’t attack its members in such a sanctuary, she said ahead of the hearing.

“We deserve to be safe and go in public and actually survive being in public,” Gamblin told the judge on Tuesday, speaking with her husband by her side, putting a supportive hand on her shoulder.

Gamblin’s mother also spoke, describing how her daughter buried her face in a friend’s blood in hopes of avoiding being shot, and then was taken to a hospital in an ambulance shared by the handcuffed killer. Both mother and daughter as well as other victims said they would prefer Aldrich get the death penalty.

Aldrich visited the club at least eight times before the attack, including stopping by an hour and a half before the shooting, according to prosecutors. Just before midnight, Aldrich returned wearing a tactical vest with ballistic plates and carrying an AR-15 style rifle and started firing immediately. Aldrich killed the first person in the entryway, shot at bartenders and customers at the bar and then moved onto the dance floor, pausing to reload the rifle’s magazine.

“The defendant was able to level everyone,” Connaughty said, adding that Aldrich fired 60 rounds in less than a minute. “The defendant emptied the magazine. The defendant was prepared to inflict the maximum amount of damage in the minimum amount of time.”

The shooting was stopped by a Navy officer who grabbed the barrel of the suspect’s rifle, burning his hand, and an Army veteran who helped subdue Aldrich until police arrived, authorities have said.

There had been a chance to prevent such violence: Aldrich was arrested in June 2021, accused of threatening their grandparents and vowing to become “the next mass killer ″ while stockpiling weapons, body armor and bomb-making materials. But Aldrich’s mother and grandparents refused to cooperate, and prosecutors failed to serve subpoenas to family members that could have kept the case alive, so the charges were eventually dismissed.

Aldrich, who will be returned to state prison after the hearing, was being sentenced federally under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded federal law in 2009 to include crimes motivated by sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

Twenty-five years later, and with Mendo now a mother herself, the trauma from that horrific day remains close on her heels.

It caught up to her when 60 people were shot dead in 2017 at a country music festival in Las Vegas, a city she had visited a lot while working in the casino industry. Then again in 2022, when 19 students and two teachers were shot and killed in Uvalde, Texas.

Mendo had been filling out her daughter’s pre-kindergarten application when news of the elementary school shooting broke. She read a few lines of a news story about Uvalde, then put her head down and cried.

“It felt like nothing changed,” she recalls thinking.

In the quarter-century since two gunmen at Columbine shot and killed 12 fellow students and a teacher in suburban Denver — an attack that played out on live television and ushered in the modern era of school shootings — the traumas of that day have continued to shadow Mendo and others who were there.

Some needed years to view themselves as Columbine survivors since they were not physically wounded. Yet things like fireworks could still trigger disturbing memories. The aftershocks — often unacknowledged in the years before mental health struggles were more widely recognized — led to some survivors suffering insomnia, dropping out of school, or disengaging from their spouses or families.

Survivors and other members of the community plan to attend a candlelight vigil on the steps of the state’s capitol Friday night, the eve of the shooting’s anniversary.

April is particularly hard for Mendo, 39, whose “brain turns to mashed potatoes” each year. She shows up at dentist appointments early, misplaces her keys, forgets to close the refrigerator door.

She leans on therapy and the understanding of an expanding group of shooting survivors she has met through The Rebels Project, a support group founded by other Columbine survivors following a 2012 shooting when a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in the nearby suburb of Aurora. Mendo started seeing a therapist after her child’s first birthday, at the urging of fellow survivor moms.

After she broke down over Uvalde, Mendo, a single parent, said she talked to her mom, took a walk to get some fresh air, then finished her daughter’s pre-kindergarten application.

“Was I afraid of her going into the public school system? Absolutely,” Mendo said of her daughter. “I wanted her to have as normal of a life as possible.”

Researchers who’ve studied the long-term effects of gun violence in schools have quantified protracted struggles among survivors, including long-term academic effects like absenteeism and reduced college enrollment, and lower earnings later in life.

“Just counting lives lost is kind of an incorrect way to capture the full cost of these tragedies,” said Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Department of Health Policy.

Mass killings have recurred with numbing frequency in the years since Columbine, with almost 600 attacks in which four or more people have died, not including the perpetrator, since 2006, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.

More than 80% of the 3,045 victims in those attacks were killed by a firearm.

Nationwide hundreds of thousands of people have been exposed to school shootings that are often not mass-casualty events but still traumatic, Rossin-Slater said. The impacts can last a lifetime, she added, resulting in “kind of a persistent, reduced potential” for survivors.

Those who were present at Columbine say the years since have given them time to learn more about what happened to them and how to cope with it.

Heather Martin, now 42, was a Columbine senior in 1999. In college, she began crying during a fire drill, realizing later that a fire alarm had gone off for three hours when she and 60 other students hid in a barricaded office during the high school shooting. She couldn’t return to that class and was marked absent each time, and says she failed it after refusing to write a final paper on school violence, despite telling her professor of her experience at Columbine.

It took 10 years for her to see herself as a survivor, after she was invited back with the rest of the class of 1999 for an anniversary event. She saw fellow classmates having similar struggles and almost immediately decided to go back to college to become a teacher.

Martin, a co-founder of The Rebels Project, named after Columbine’s mascot, said 25 years has given her time to struggle and figure out how to work out of those struggles.

“I just know myself so well now and know how I respond to things and what might activate me and how I can bounce back and be OK. And most importantly I think I can recognize when I am not OK and when I do need to seek help,” she said.

Kiki Leyba, a first-year teacher at Columbine in 1999, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder soon after the shooting. He felt a strong sense of commitment to return to the school, where he threw himself into his work. But he continued to have panic attacks.

To help him cope, he had sleeping pills and some Xanax for anxiety, Leyba said. One therapist recommended chamomile tea.

Things got harder for him after the 2002 graduation of Mendo’s class, the last cohort of students who lived through the shooting since they had been through so much together.

By 2005, after years of not taking care of himself and suffering from lack of sleep, Leyba said he would often check out from family life, sleeping in on the weekends and turning into a “blob on the couch.” Finally, his wife Kallie enrolled him in a one-week trauma treatment program, arranging for him to take the time off from work without telling him.

“Thankfully that really gave me a kind of a foothold … to do the work to climb out of that,” said Leyba, who said breathing exercises, journaling, meditation and anti-depressants have helped him.

Like Mendo and Martin, he has traveled around the country to work with survivors of shootings.

“That worst day has transformed into something I can offer to others,” said Leyba, who is in Washington, D.C. this week meeting with officials about gun violence and promoting a new film about his trauma journey.

Mendo still lives in the area, and her 5-year-old daughter attends school near Columbine. When her daughter’s school locked down last year as police swarmed the neighborhood during a hostage situation, Mendo recalled worrying things like: What if my child is in danger? What if there is another school shooting like Columbine?

When Mendo picked up her daughter, she seemed a little scared, and she hugged her mom a little tighter. Mendo breathed deeply to stay calm, a technique she had learned in therapy, and put on a brave face.

“If I was putting down some fear, she would pick it up,” she said. “I didn’t want that for her.”

____

Associated Press writer Mead Gruver contributed to this report.

DENVER (AP) — A couple who owned a Colorado funeral home where authorities last year discovered 190 decaying bodies were indicted on federal charges that they misspent nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds on vacations, cosmetic surgery, jewelry and other personal expenses, according to court documents unsealed Monday.

The indictment reaffirms accusations from state prosecutors that Jon and Carie Hallford gave families dry concrete instead of cremated ashes and alleges the couple buried the wrong body on two occasions.

The couple also collected more than $130,000 from families for cremations and burial services they never provided, the indictment said.

The 15 charges brought by the federal grand jury are in addition to more than 200 criminal counts already pending against the Hallfords in Colorado state court for corpse abuse, money laundering, theft and forgery.

The federal offenses carry potential penalties of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines, the indictment said.

On Monday, the owners of the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs entered a federal courtroom bound in shackles as they made an initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Neff argued the couple were a flight risk, after they allegedly fled to Oklahoma last October when the decaying bodies were first discovered and before their arrest on state charges on Nov. 8.

“They simply evaporated from the community,” Neff said.

The judge did not immediately decide if the couple should be released pending trial. He set an arraignment hearing for Thursday.

Carie Hallford’s attorney, Chaz Melihercik, said he would argue against detention at the next hearing. Jon Hallford’s public defender, Kilie Latendresse, told the judge that he had been following his bond conditions in the state case and that detention was unnecessary.

The new charges and accusations triggered more anguish for families who sent their loved ones to the funeral home.

Every new revelation about the case is a jolt to Tanya Wilson, who hired Return to Nature to cremate her mother’s remains. Wilson spread the ashes with family in Hawaii. After the grim discovery, Wilson was told those ashes weren’t actually her mother, whose body has since been identified among the 190 decaying bodies.

Hundreds of family members, like Wilson, had thought they put their loved one’s to rest, or clutched their ashes close, only to have that healing torn away.

“I honestly feel like I have whiplash, and I can’t hold onto one emotion long enough to be able to process it,” Wilson said over the phone.

Before the new indictment was unsealed, public records showed the Hallfords had been plagued by debt — facing evictions and lawsuits for unpaid cremations even as they spent lavishly on themselves.

The indictment alleges the couple used $882,300 in pandemic relief funds to buy items that also included a vehicle, dinners, tuition for their child and cryptocurrency. The fraud involved three loans obtained between March 2020 and October 2021, authorities said.

Previously released court documents from the state abuse of corpse case reveal more details about what they were spending money on.

They bought a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti that together were worth over $120,000 — enough to cover cremation costs twice over for all of the bodies found in their business’ facility last October, according to previous court testimony from FBI Agent Andrew Cohen.

“That is just thoroughly disgusting for a lack of a better term, just reading about all the money that they had,” said Wilson. “Just the price of the two vehicles that he bought … it was enough to just do right by these families.”

The Hallfords also paid for trips to California, Florida and Las Vegas, as well as $31,000 in cryptocurrency, laser body sculpting and shopping at luxury retailers like Gucci and Tiffany & Co., according to court documents.

The couple have not yet entered pleas to the state’s abuse of corpse charges.

The Hallfords left in their wake a trail of unpaid bills, disgruntled landlords and unsettled business disputes.

The couple once claimed to a former landlord that they would settle their rent when they were paid for work they had done for the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the COVID-19 pandemic. The business’ website featured logos for FEMA and the Department of Defense.

FEMA has said they did not have any contracts with the funeral home. A defense department database search also showed no contracts with Return to Nature.

The company failed to pay more than $5,000 in 2022 property taxes at one of its locations, public records show. Then last year, the business was slapped with a $21,000 judgement for not paying for “a couple hundred cremations,” according to public records and attorney Lisa Epps with Wilbert Funeral Services crematory.

The Hallfords’ alleged lies, money laundering, forgery and manipulation over the past four years devastated hundreds of grieving family members.

The 190 bodies were discovered last year in a bug-infested storage building in the small town of Penrose, about two hours south of Denver. Some of the remains had languished since 2019.

An investigation by The Associated Press found that the Hallfords likely sent fake ashes and fabricated cremation records to families who did business with them. They appear to have written on death certificates given to families, along with ashes, that the cremations were performed by Wilbert Funeral Services, which denied performing them for the funeral home at that time.

As the decomposing bodies were identified, families learned that the ashes they’d received could not have been the remains of their loved ones. Court documents allege at least some were dry concrete.

As far back as 2020, there were concerns raised about the business’s improper storage of bodies. But there was no follow-up by regulators, letting the collection of bodies grow to nearly 200 over the following three years.

Colorado has some of weakest funeral home regulations in the country. Funeral home operators in the state don’t have to graduate high school, let alone study mortuary science or pass an exam.

The Hallfords case and others in recent years spurred Colorado lawmakers to introduce legislation to strengthen oversight with rules that are in line with or exceed those in other states. Those bills are currently moving through the state Legislature.

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

DENVER (AP) — A college student accused of killing his roommate and another person at a University of Colorado-Colorado Springs dorm room last week told his roommate a month earlier he would “kill him” if he was asked to take out the trash again, according to a court document released Friday.

The dispute in early January was reported to campus police and housing officials but there is no indication in court documents that university officials made any attempt to remove the suspect from the room despite multiple reports of conflicts, including the threat.

Chris Valentine, a spokesperson for the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, said due to the ongoing investigation and federal student privacy laws, the university couldn’t “provide any additional information about the people involved in this incident.”

The new details about the shooting and the threat were included in an arrest affidavit that was unsealed by a judge after charges against the suspect, Nicholas Jordan of Detroit, were announced during a court hearing Friday.

Jordan, 25, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, felony menacing and committing a crime of violence in the Feb. 16 killing of his roommate, Samuel Knopp, 24, of Parker, Colorado, and Celie Rain Montgomery, 26, of Pueblo, Colorado, in a dorm room at the university.

Jordan’s lawyer, Nick Rogers, objected to the document’s release, in part because he said his client — a junior studying accounting — would continue to be “prosecuted in the media.” He did not address the allegations against Jordan during the hearing and tried unsuccessfully to have Jordan released from jail without paying any bail.

Another roommate who also lived with Knopp and Jordan told investigators that he and Knopp made multiple complaints about Jordan’s “living area cleanliness,” and his marijuana and cigarette smoking, besides the incident that led to the threat being made over the trash, the document said. The threat came after Knopp gathered some trash in a bag and placed it at the door of Jordan’s bedroom in the pod-style dorm, which included a shared living area and individual bedrooms, the other roommate said.

“Mr. Jordan threatened Mr. Knopp and told him that he would ”kill him” and there would be consequences if Mr. Jordan was asked to take out the trash again,” police said in the document.

Jordan filed a request to withdraw from the university about 14 hours before the fatal shootings. His dorm room was empty when police arrived, court records said.

An electronic access number assigned to Jordan was used twice to enter the dorm building on Feb. 16, once just before 4 a.m. and a second time at 5:42 a.m. A few minutes before 6 a.m., a surveillance camera captured somebody running out of the dorm building, the arrest affidavit said.

The University of Colorado-Colorado Springs has about 11,000 students. It was founded in 1965 and started as a division of the University of Colorado in Boulder, the state’s flagship public college. It was recognized as an independent college in 1974, the university website says.

The warrant for Jordan’s arrest was issued on the first day of the investigation, but he was not publicly identified as a suspect until his arrest Monday in a residential area of Colorado Springs, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from campus.

In addition to a gun that prosecutors said was found in Jordan’s car, authorities recently learned that he also had a fully loaded AK-47, Robert Willett of the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office told Judge David Shakes during the hearing. Jordan had a temporary job and appeared to have all his belongings in his car when he was arrested, Willett said, arguing Jordan was a flight risk.

Jordan was eager to have a hearing on the evidence as soon as possible, even though his lawyers, who are public defenders, had asked for it to be delayed because their office was recently hit by a cyberattack. Shakes agreed to schedule it earlier, on March 27.

According to police, the other roommate reported the shots early on Feb. 16, leading to the discovery of the bodies of Knopp and Montgomery in Crestone House.

Knopp “was a senior studying music and a beloved member of the Visual and Performing Arts department. He was an accomplished guitar player and an extremely talented musician,” University Chancellor Jennifer Sobanet said in a statement on Sunday. Montgomery was not a student at the university.

___

Hanson reported from Helena, Montana.

The grisly discovery occurred Feb. 6 during a court-ordered eviction of a house rented by Miles Harford, the 33-year-old owner of Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services in the Denver suburb of Littleton, police said. It had been closed since September 2022.

“Mr. Harford appears to have experienced financial trouble in his business. At times he was not able to complete cremations to provide remains to families for services,” Denver Police Cmdr. Matt Clark said Friday. He said on occasion, Harford might have provided family members with another person’s ashes instead of the ashes of their loved ones.

Temporary urns — plastic boxes the size of a shoe box — were found in the crawl space of the house while a Denver sheriff’s deputy oversaw the removal of Harford’s belongings, Clark said. Some of the boxes were empty.

Other urns were found in a moving truck parked outside and still others were in a hearse, where investigators found the woman’s body covered with blankets, Clark said. Harford said she died in August of 2022.

The recovered cremains appear to be associated with individuals who passed away between 2012 and 2021, he said.

Authorities have been in contact with Harford and an arrest warrant was issued for him Friday. He’s believed to be in the Denver area and police were “working to facilitate his arrest,” Clark said, adding that Harford has been cooperative with investigators.

Former customer Crystallyn Nunez said it took months to get the ashes of her grandfather and father back from Harford after they died in 2021.

Repeated phone calls and texts were met with a series of excuses, she said. Harford at one point said he was in a car crash while transporting the remains, then later claimed his mother had gotten into an accident while trying to deliver them, Nunez said. When the family offered to come pick them up, Harford danced around the issue, she said.

She got her grandfather’s ashes after a few months and her father’s ashes after nearly a year, but never received necklaces containing their remains that the family had paid for, she said. Nunez said her family already had doubts that they had received the correct remains. The discovery at Harford’s house only reinforced those fears.

“It’s making our whole family question whether or not everything was done the correct way,” said Nunez. Her family has contacted police to determine if they have the correct remains.

The discovery is the latest in a string of horrific cases involving funeral home operators in Colorado, which has some of the weakest oversight of the funeral industry in the nation. The state has no routine inspections of funeral homes or qualification requirements for operators.

A married couple is awaiting trial in Colorado Springs following their arrest last year for allegedly abandoning almost 200 bodies over several years inside a bug-infested facility and giving fake ashes to family members of the deceased. The operators of another funeral home in the western Colorado city of Montrose received federal prison sentences last year for mail fraud after they were accused of selling body parts and distributing fake ashes.

More than two dozen additional criminal cases and complaints involving Colorado funeral homes since 2007 were detailed in a January report to lawmakers from state regulators. The cases included bodies being mishandled, thefts of personal effects, improper embalming of bodies, mislabeled remains and remains never returned to families. The report concluded that additional regulation for the industry was “necessary to protect the public.”

Harford is expected to be charged with abuse of a corpse, forgery of the death certificate and theft of the money paid for the cremation. Other charges are possible as the investigation continues, said Denver District Attorney Beth McCann.

No voicemail was set up on a telephone number listed for Harford. He also did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Clark said Harford acknowledged to police that he owed money to several crematories in the area and none would cremate the 63-year-old woman’s body, so he decided to store her body in the hearse. Her family told investigators they were given what they believed were the woman’s ashes, which have been turned over to the Office of the Medical Examiner.

The family is devastated, Clark said.

“They’re shocked. They were hurt by this,” he said. “They believed that they were processing their grief with the remains that they had and had had services with that. And then they come to find out that that was not the person that was processed, and in fact, she was being held in that hearse there.”

The other cremains found on the property appear to have been professionally cremated, officials said. Investigators are checking labels on the cremains and state databases and meeting with families.

“As you can imagine, these are extremely difficult conversations to have and the information comes as a shock to many of the families, several of whom believed they had the entire remains of their loved one,” Clark said.

State licensing records show no discipline or board actions for Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services, which was licensed from March 2012 through May 2022.

In 2018, Harford and his company were sued by another funeral home company and ordered to pay about $27,000 for unspecified services the other home provided, according to court records. The same company, Kansas-based Wilbert Funeral Services, sued Harford and the company again in 2021, saying Harford owed nearly $9,000. That case is still pending.

Last year, a woman who said she was Harford’s former employer sought a court order to keep him away from her over alleged harassment. In her application, she said she had paid Harford to cremate two of her pets but he didn’t return them to her. There’s no indication in court records that the order was granted.

___

Hanson reported from Helena, Mont. Associated Press reporter Thomas Peipert contributed to this story.

BRIGHTON, Colo. (AP) — Colorado prosecutors focused on police body camera footage — both raw and digitally enhanced — as they began building their case Thursday against two officers charged in the death of Elijah McClain, a young Black man who was stopped, put in a neck hold and sedated with ketamine four years ago.

McClain’s death, alongside the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, was raised up by protesters nationwide as a searing example of excessive force by police against Black people.

Charges against the officers were brought in 2021 after a revised coroner’s report determined that the powerful sedative given by paramedics to McClain, 23, played a key role in his death.

The two officers on trial, Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt, have pleaded not guilty to charges of criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter and assault, all felonies. It’s the first of several cases stemming from McClain’s death, with a third officer and two paramedics scheduled for trial later this year.

David Notowitz, an expert in audio and video forensics, testified Thursday that he brightens dark video images and removes distracting sounds like sirens to help present a clearer picture of what was captured by body camera, for use in criminal trials.

The raw video from Aug. 24, 2019, has been publicly released, and includes McClain pleading with officers and telling them, “I can’t breathe.” However, the enhanced footage compiled by Notowitz, who is a paid expert for the prosecution, has not been previously shown.

Defense attorneys raised objections to some of that footage, which they described as manipulated. Judge Mark Warner said he would allow the jury to see it but issued an instruction for jurors to disregard anything seen or heard in the enhanced video if they could not see or hear it in the original.

Prosecutors introduced the original body camera video through their first witness, Lt. Delbert Tisdale, who oversees the bodycam program at the Aurora Police Department and was not present during the fatal encounter.

McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, sat in the front row of the courtroom for a second day Thursday.

McClain, a massage therapist, was stopped while walking home late at night in the Denver suburb of Aurora after a 911 caller reported him as suspicious, saying he was wearing a ski mask even though it was late August. Relatives say McClain wore the mask because anemia made him cold. Family and friends describe him as a gentle introvert who volunteered to play his violin for cats at an animal shelter.

His pleading words captured on body camera — “I’m just different” — painfully underscored his apparent confusion at what was happening.

If prosecutors can convince jurors the stop was unjustified, that would undermine any argument that McClain’s injuries were a result of the officers just doing their jobs.

In opening statements Wednesday, lawyers for the two sides painted contrasting pictures of the episode.

Prosecutors said the officers ignored McClain’s pleas for help and failed to follow their own training.

McClain threw up repeatedly after the neck hold and was drowning in his own vomit, prosecutor Jonathan Bunge said. “He is drifting further and further toward death. The sedative is the last thing he needs.”

Defense attorneys said the death was tragic but the officers’ actions were in line with department policies. They sought to shift blame to the paramedics.

“Mr. McClain died because paramedic (Jeremy) Cooper injected him with 1.7, 1.8 times the ketamine for someone his weight and size,” said Roedema’s attorney Reid Elkus.

McClain, who weighed 140 pounds (64 kilograms), overdosed because he received a higher dose than recommended for someone of his size, pathologist Stephen Cina found.

Cina has said he couldn’t rule out whether the stress of being held down by the officers may have contributed to his death.

Officer Nathan Woodyard, who is set to go on trial later this year, was the first to approach McClain and was soon joined by Roedema and Rosenblatt.

McClain, using earbuds, initially kept walking. Within 10 seconds, Woodyard put his hands on McClain, turning him around. As McClain tried to escape his grip, Woodyard said, “Relax, or I’m going to have to change this situation.”

The encounter quickly escalated, with officers taking him to the ground and putting him in a neck hold. McClain initially lost consciousness after one officer put him in a neck hold pressing against his carotid artery.

After McClain was kept for 15 minutes on the ground, paramedics gave him 500 milligrams of ketamine. He suffered cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital and was taken off life support three days later.

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

BRIGHTON, Colo. (AP) — Two Denver-area police officers who put Elijah McClain in a neck hold ignored his pleas of “I can’t breathe” before the Black man was injected by paramedics with a powerful sedative and died, prosecutors said Wednesday, as a trial began over the 2019 confrontation that became a rallying cry for protests and spurred police reform.

In opening arguments for the first of several trials stemming from McClain’s death, lawyers for the two sides painted contrasting pictures of the fatal struggle after he was stopped by police in Aurora.

Officers Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt approached McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, as he walked home from a convenience store carrying only a plastic bag with three cans of iced tea and his phone. A 911 caller had reported him as “sketchy.”

If prosecutors can convince jurors the Aug. 24, 2019 stop was unjustified, that would undermine any argument that McClain’s injuries were a result of the officers just doing their jobs.

Roedema and Rosenblatt are both charged with criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter and assault. They have pleaded not guilty but have never spoken publicly about the allegations against them. The trial is expected to last about a month.

A third officer and two paramedics are also charged in McClain’s death and are scheduled for trial later this year.

Officials have determined the sedative ketamine played a key role in McClain’s death, which fueled renewed scrutiny about the use of the drug for people considered to be acting erratically and led Colorado’s health department to limit when emergency workers can administer it. In 2020, neck holds by police were banned by the state’s Democratic-led Legislature.

Prosecutor Jonathan Bunge said the officers violated department policies by using excessive force against McClain, who was unarmed, and failing to deescalate the situation.

“Listen to Elijah’s words,” Bunge said as he replayed police body camera video of the episode. “When Elijah is on the ground handcuffed, he’s saying over and over and over again, ‘I can’t breathe. Please help me.’”

McClain threw up repeatedly after the neck hold and was drowning in his own vomit, according to Bunge. “He is drifting further and further toward death. The sedative is the last thing he needs,” the prosecutor said.

But Roedema’s attorney, Reid Elkus, said the officers’ actions were in line with department policies and their own training. McClain was stopped in a “high-crime area,” and officers repeatedly told him to halt before he complied, Elkus said, adding that they didn’t want to hurt him.

“Just because a tragedy occurred doesn’t mean criminality occurred,” Elkus said. He blamed McClain’s death on paramedics who later arrived on the scene and took control over his care.

“After being injected with ketamine, that’s when Mr. McClain’s pulse stopped,” Elkus said. “Mr. McClain died because paramedic (Jeremy) Cooper injected him with 1.7, 1.8 times the ketamine for someone his weight and size.”

Rosenblatt’s attorney, Harvey Steinberg, argued that the officers had no choice but to stop McClain after the 911 call. He added that McClain showed “continued resistance” after he was stopped and the officers were forced to respond accordingly.

“Please be fair and don’t allow emotion or sympathy come into it,” Steinberg told jurors. “And don’t let politics enter into this at all.”

McClain’s mother sat in the front of the courtroom for the opening statements. Sheneen McClain dabbed tears from her eyes when Bunge described how her son, who was often cold, was wearing a runner’s mask when he went to a convenience store near his house before police stopped him.

Family members of the two officers also were present, as were other Aurora police.

Before jury selection could be finalized, Judge Mark Warner talked behind closed doors with attorneys for both sides as well as a man whom the defense struck from the jury pool after he said he’d been racially profiled about a half-dozen times by police, including in Aurora. The man remained off the jury, but what happened in the closed discussions was not revealed in open court.

The 12 jurors and 2 alternates appeared to be mostly white.

Other potential jurors who were removed included a woman who identified herself as Hispanic and said her husband was singled out for arrest in a conflict with white people. Removals by prosecutors included the daughter of a police officer who said officers weren’t being supported by society and a former EMT who witnessed people being given ketamine.

In response to a defense objection, the judge found that the prosecution did not remove potential white jurors because of their race.

Charges were not brought for two years after McClain died, by which time a national reckoning had begun over racial injustice in American policing following the murder of George Floyd by officers in Minneapolis.

In 2019, a local district attorney, Dave Young, called McClain’s death “tragic” but decided against prosecuting the officers largely because the coroner’s office could not determine exactly how McClain died.

A revised coroner’s report was issued in 2021, relying in part on information from a grand jury investigation. It found the cause of death was complications from ketamine after McClain, who weighed 140 pounds (64 kilograms), overdosed because he received a higher dose than recommended for someone of his size, pathologist Stephen Cina found.

“I believe that Mr. McClain would most likely be alive but for the administration of ketamine,” Cina said.

Cina said he couldn’t rule out whether the stress of being held down by the officers may have contributed to McClain’s death.

Officer Nathan Woodyard, who is set to go on trial later this year, was the first to approach McClain and was soon joined by Roedema and Rosenblatt.

McClain, using earbuds, initially kept walking. Within 10 seconds, Woodyard put his hands on McClain, turning him around. As McClain tried to escape his grip, Woodyard said, “Relax, or I’m going to have to change this situation.”

The encounter quickly escalated, with officers taking him to the ground and putting him in a neck hold.

McClain suffered cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital and was pronounced dead three days later.

Prosecutors played numerous body camera clips including one in which they said McClain spoke his last words as Roedema jerked up on one of his arms, popping a joint.

“Please help me,” McClain was heard saying. “Please help me.”