Police have arrested a Colorado man who they say broke into the state’s supreme court building and held a security guard at gunpoint.
Authorities have said the break-in is not connected to previous threats received by Colorado supreme court justices after their decision last month to remove Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot. Rather, they said it resulted from a nearby car crash in which one motorist pulled a gun on another.
The man at the center of the case reportedly shot at the building and fired additional rounds while inside the facility, the Colorado state patrol said in a news release. No one was injured by the gunfire.
The intrusion occurred on Tuesday shortly after 1.15am ET in Denver, the state’s capital, the Colorado state patrol said.
Before the break-in, the intruder had been involved in a car crash and pointed a gun at the other motorist involved.
The man then fired out of a window of the Ralph L Carr Colorado judicial center in Denver’s city center. He later encountered an unarmed security guard, stole a set of keys from him at gunpoint, and accessed other parts of the building.
“The individual obtained keys from the security guard and proceeded into other parts of the building and accessed an unknown number of floors,” the Colorado state patrol said.
The intruder traveled to the seventh floor of the building and fired more shots there. At about 3am, the man called law enforcement himself and voluntarily surrendered.
He was arrested and taken to a local hospital to be evaluated. His identity has not been released.
The Colorado state patrol added that the building endured “significant and extensive damage” and that the Denver police department was leading an investigation into that aspect of the case.
The Denver fire department also responded to the scene and quickly extinguished a blaze that had been reported at the building, CBS News reported.
Colorado’s supreme court prevented Trump from appearing on the ballot after finding him ineligible to hold public office under the 14th amendment’s insurrection clause, finding that he incited the January 6 US Capitol attack.
Trump’s team is expected to appeal the decision to the US supreme court as early as Tuesday. Such an appeal has already been filed by the state’s Republican party.
The FBI and Colorado police have been investigating threats directed at justices over the ballot removal issue.
As a result, the Denver police department said it had also dispatched additional officers to patrol the homes of Colorado supreme court justices.
