CRAIG — Tanner Sholes woke up at his friend’s house at 6 a.m. on Sept. 22, 2023, and started walking to his mother’s home across town, a BB gun tucked beneath his shirt that he had used to shoot prairie dogs.
An hour later, two people called 911 to report a man carrying a rifle through this small city about 40 miles west of Steamboat Springs.
“I really didn’t think anything of it,” Sholes said in a recent interview. “I didn’t have no warrants, didn’t do anything wrong to think I should be worried.”
But the cops were worried. They recognized Sholes from a litany of previous encounters, including a time earlier that year when police say he brandished a knife and barricaded himself in an abandoned home.
“Tanner is extremely violent, unpredictable and a multi-time convicted felon,” a responding officer later wrote in a police report. Other officers called him “erratic and volatile.”
The only offense police suspected Sholes of that morning was violating a protection order. But authorities determined he needed to be stopped, so they devised a plan, according to police reports and body-camera footage: They would run him over with their SUV.
Moffat County Undersheriff Chip McIntyre gave several commands to Sholes to stop and drop to the ground, video shows. The man continued walking, but raised his arms to his side.
Twenty seconds later, a sheriff’s lieutenant revved his engine and rammed his vehicle into Sholes at 20 mph to 30 mph, according to footage of the incident. Sholes suffered tears of the ACL, meniscus, rotator cuff and bicep, among other injuries. He still lives with pain.
“I’m guilty no matter what it is,” he said. “There’s no gray area — it’s always black and white with these guys.”
Violent police encounters and excessive-force allegations have become more common in recent years in this city of 9,000 tucked in Colorado’s northwest corner.
Craig has seen just three police shootings in its recorded history, and they’ve all occurred since 2023 — a per-capita incident rate 20 times higher than Denver’s. Meanwhile, the city paid out at least $400,000 to settle three separate claims of excessive force by the Craig Police Department within a 10-month period in 2020 and 2021. Several times, police have used force on individuals, only to later discover they had stopped the wrong person.
One resident, Christopher Rothermund, received two settlements from the city over 20 years, both stemming from violent police encounters. Officers shot and killed him in 2023 after he pointed a gun at them following a pursuit in downtown Craig.
Media attention largely focuses on larger, more urban police departments. The Denver Post focused on excessive-force complaints in a smaller Colorado community to underscore that these incidents also routinely occur outside the broader spotlight.
No documentation provided to The Post by the Craig Police Department or the Moffat County Sheriff’s Office showed officers received any discipline for these violent responses, including the 2023 incident with the SUV. In fact, several have since been promoted.
One sheriff’s detective was part of the team that ran over Sholes and also fatally shot Rothermund. Police reports and interviews show the detective, at his previous job in Routt County, was accused of tapping his ex-wife’s phone and making threats. He remains employed by the Moffat County Sheriff’s Office.
“You’ve got recycled bad cops in a lot of these districts,” said David Lane, a longtime Colorado attorney who specializes in police misconduct cases. “They’re bad in major metro police stations and are now the law in these smaller jurisdictions.”
Residents who’ve interacted with law enforcement in Craig say they’re scared to call 911 for fear of what might happen.
“They’re really evil people,” said Croix Orona, who received a settlement after being shocked with a Taser repeatedly by police seven years ago. “They think they’re a gang. They think they can do whatever they want to people.”
Craig police representatives, along with McIntyre, who is now the Moffat County sheriff, did not respond to repeated interview requests from The Post.
Craig City Manager Peter Brixius called the recent police shootings and settlements “unusual and unfortunate,” but said the department was justified in using force in all of those cases.
“Our police officers are highly trained,” he said in an interview. “We pride ourselves on the courteous nature of our officers. When they’re forced into an incident, they will take appropriate actions to protect the citizens of Craig.”
Matt Karzen, the district attorney for the 14th Judicial District, which includes Craig, said law enforcement officials there “operate with and demand integrity in the performance of their duties. I am not aware of any effort or culture in the towns or counties of northwest Colorado, in my time as DA, to cover up misconduct by officers.”
The Post compiled this report from lawsuits, police reports, body-worn camera footage, internal affairs investigations, settlement agreements and interviews with those injured by police, and their families.
‘This is not legal’
On July 23, 2018, police received an anonymous call about an individual breaking into a trailer at the Cedar Mountain Mobile Home Community in Craig.
The caller reported that a tall, bearded man wearing a hoodie was standing in the dark outside one of the homes.
The officers didn’t know where the home was located, so they wandered around the neighborhood looking for the right location or a suspect, according to a 2020 federal lawsuit.
Croix Orona was sitting on the steps of a camper in pitch-black darkness when officers stopped to talk to him. A family friend owned the trailer, and he was staying there.
Despite Orona not matching the physical description relayed by the caller, police immediately started questioning him as if he were the suspect, the lawsuit states. When Orona declined to answer questions from the officers, they quickly approached him.
“What am I (expletive) doing?” Orona said, according to body-worn camera footage reviewed by The Post.
Police wrote in an incident report that Orona took a “fighting stance” and that they believed he was holding something in his right hand. But video shows Orona raising his arms and opening his hands. He wasn’t holding anything.
“I wasn’t going to fight them,” Orona said in an interview.
He moved to open the trailer. That’s when officers deployed their Tasers.
“This is where I’m staying!” Orona said in the body-camera footage. “This is not legal. This is not (expletive) legal.”
He cried out for help as officers used the Taser like a stun gun, delivering electric shocks directly to Oronoa’s skin. He lost consciousness, then began having a seizure. Orona said he remembers waking up in the hospital to medical staff giving him a catheter.
He was charged with resisting arrest and obstruction — charges the district attorney later dropped, according to the lawsuit.
Shortly after the incident, Orona’s grandfather filed a complaint with the Craig Police Department. A subsequent internal affairs investigation found the officers’ actions were “articulated and justified.” The officers were exonerated. It’s not clear whether they ever found the person breaking into the trailer.
In 2020, the city of Craig paid Orona $60,000 to settle his claims.
One man, 3 violent police encounters
Law enforcement was also quite familiar with another member of Orona’s family: his uncle Christopher Rothermund.
Rothermund was a “smart ass,” his father, Orlando Rothermund, said in an interview. “He was very thoughtful and loving, but he was a pain in the ass.”
This abrasive attitude toward police led him to constant trouble. He racked up arrests beginning in 1994 for a bevy of different offenses: traffic violations, resisting arrest, obstructing police, assault, menacing, trespassing and violating restraining orders.
The cops knew Rothermund — and used force against him at least three times over the years.
On Feb. 13, 1999, two officers responded to Rothermund’s house on reports of an argument between him and his wife.
Officers never asked permission to enter the house, had no probable cause and lacked a search warrant or arrest warrant, according to a federal lawsuit Rothermund filed against the officers in 2000. When asked what the argument was about, he told police that it was none of their business and asked them to leave.
The officers moved Rothermund into the hallway, where they “physically assaulted” him by “striking, handcuffing, pushing and shoving him, and pulling his hair out,” the lawsuit states. They also hit him with pepper spray.
Craig police initiated a criminal investigation into Rothermund.
A judge in that case blasted the officers’ actions that day, according to court documents, saying, “There is no constitutional right that protects police officers from obnoxious people.”
“One of the occupational hazards of being an officer is taking the verbal abuse and putting up with the attitude that some people have toward police,” the judge wrote.
The case was dismissed. Rothermund later reached an undisclosed settlement with the city.
Twenty years later, it happened again.
Craig police responded to a trespassing call at the Kum & Go gas station near downtown on May 20, 2020. They were looking for a man named Frank Hickson, who had multiple warrants out for his arrest, according to a police report.
An officer stopped a man they believed to be Hickson outside another gas station across the street. An argument ensued. The man started running, and the officer used a Taser to shock him in the back, the police report states.
At that point, the officer realized he didn’t have Hickson, he wrote in his report. He had just shocked Rothermund, hitting him with all four probes of the device. Rothermund said his fingers went numb.
The following year, just seven months after the city settled with his nephew, Orona, Craig officials handed Rothermund a $30,000 check.
But that wouldn’t be the last violent encounter he had with city police.
On March 31, 2023, a witness at the Cool Water Grill in Craig noticed Rothermund get nervous when an officer walked into the restaurant. The officer found Rothermund had a warrant out for his arrest — which his family said was related to a $100 city nuisance ticket for keeping an inoperable vehicle on a gas station’s property.
The officer told Rothermund he wanted to speak with him, but Rothermund ignored the request and took off, according to a decision letter from the 14th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
Rothermund pulled out a handgun and pointed it at the officer, the letter states.
“I wanna die,” he told police. “Shoot me.” Rothermund put the gun in his mouth.
Moffat County sheriff’s deputies responded, telling Rothermund to get on the ground. He did not comply.
“I’m gonna die before I go to jail,” he said, according to body-worn camera footage of the incident.
Video shows Rothermund raising the gun again in the direction of the officers. Two of them fired at Rothermund, 52, killing him.
“For a $100 warrant,” his father said, “I lost my son.”
Family members said Rothermund suffered from mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He lived for spells in his car by one of the gas stations in town.
Rothermund was struggling before his death, Orlando Rothermund said. He didn’t want to go back to jail because he kept getting beaten up.
Britney Rothermund, Christopher’s daughter, last saw her father two months before he died. They went drinking at the Popular Bar in Craig — their favorite haunt to shoot pool. Her father was really good, she said, playing in leagues over the years.
He filtered in and out of her life, she said. Her parents split when she was young and her father worked out of state for a while.
He spent some time in prison, but frequently sent Britney letters and, one time, a jewelry box he made out of old newspapers.
In high school, police used to pull Britney over repeatedly on her way to school, she said. The cops, she said, would always ask about her dad.
“I don’t understand why the cops were always bothering us,” she said.
Orlando Rothermund, a former Los Angeles police officer who moved to Craig in 1979, said he had always believed in law enforcement.
“They’re too trigger-happy now,” he said. “They don’t use common sense. They know they can get away with it.”
Suicide attempt turns into police shooting
Craig’s most recent police shooting — the third since 2023 — occurred the morning of April 26 at 730 Ashley Road.
Troy Curtis Jr. and his wife of 11 years, Elena, were going through a divorce. Curtis was in between medications for bipolar disorder and depression, he said.
The night before, the couple argued via text message regarding their relationship and separation.
“With each day, my mind cares less what happens next,” Curtis wrote to Elena, according to messages included in a decision letter from the 14th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. “So I’m letting go. You get what you wanted. It’s not what I wanted.”
Alarmed, Elena ran downstairs to check on Curtis. She believed he would try to leave the house to kill himself, according to the DA’s letter.
Elena slept on the couch that night to keep an eye on him. At 8:30 a.m. the next day, she woke Curtis up, telling him he needed to return to the hospital to address his mental health concerns.
Curtis felt trapped, he said in an interview. He grabbed his wallet, phone and a handgun from the closet and went to his truck.
Elena texted Curtis’s father, Troy Curtis Sr., to come to their house immediately. She then called 911 to report that her husband was suicidal and had a gun.
Curtis Jr. tried to start the car, but Elena had the passenger door open, preventing him from leaving.
He loaded the gun and attempted to raise it to his head. At that moment, his father lunged toward Curtis Jr. and the two began to struggle, according to interviews and the prosecutor’s letter. Curtis Jr. head-butted his father multiple times and pistol-whipped him with the gun.
Curtis Sr. told The Post that he eventually pinned his son over the center console of the truck. The father also grabbed his son’s wrist, with the gun stuck to the floorboard of the vehicle, pointing away from them.
Sgt. Dalton Caudell of the Craig Police Department arrived to see Curtis Sr. on top of his son in the truck.
At first, Curtis Sr. said he was relieved to see police at the scene. Then he saw Caudell’s face.
“I went into panic mode when I saw the officer’s demeanor,” Curtis Sr. said. “I knew there was no chance of communicating with him.”
The whole encounter took mere seconds.
Caudell yelled multiple times for Curtis Jr. to drop the gun, according to body-worn camera footage released by police.
Curtis Sr. told Caudell to grab the weapon, which was still pinned in his son’s hand on the car’s floorboard, facing away from the officer. The gun did not appear in the body-camera video.
The video appears to capture audio of Curtis Jr.’s gun firing twice, with bullets traveling through the rear passenger door away from the officer.
Caudell then opened fire, shooting Curtis Jr. six times in the upper shoulder and upper torso. Somehow, Curtis Sr. was not shot.
“Are you kidding me?” the father said in the video.
At no point was the gun pointed at the officer, both Curtises said, and Curtis Jr. said he had stopped resisting his father. He said he never threatened his father, his wife or the officer that day. He only intended to hurt himself.
“He never made any attempt to de-escalate,” Curtis Jr. said of Caudell. “If he tried to take my gun, I wouldn’t have resisted.”
Curtis Sr. said he didn’t understand why the officer felt lethal force was the only answer.
The bullets, miraculously, missed Curtis Jr.’s organs. He still has a bullet lodged against his right lung and one in his chest. He sustained two fractured ribs and a broken arm.
It’s been difficult to eat and sleep in the aftermath of the shooting, Curtis Jr. said. He’s shed 30 pounds since April.
After taking a few weeks off to recover, Curtis Jr. returned to work at an auto body shop in Steamboat Springs.
An avid gun enthusiast with several family members in law enforcement, Curtis Jr. said he doesn’t think he could call 911 if he needed help. Even the sight of a uniformed officer with the badge and gun holster gives him anxiety now, deep, physical anxiety burrowed into his chest.
“I’m more afraid of them now than anyone else,” he said.
Curtis Jr. was charged with felony menacing and unlawful private transfer of a firearm.
Karzen, the district attorney, ruled the shooting was justified this month. Caudell will not be charged.
Caudell, in an email, said he could not comment on the case due to the pending criminal proceedings against Curtis Jr.
‘Cops are supposed to protect people’
Civil rights attorneys say rural law enforcement agencies often lack training and resources, which can lead to constitutional violations.
“You see a pattern in smaller police departments in less urban environments,” said Raymond Bryant, Orona’s attorney. “Officers think the only tool they have is force.”
And when they do use force, they’re unlikely to be disciplined for their actions, these lawyers said.
Research suggests rural areas tend to be more politically conservative and less focused on police reforms. On top of that, rural residents are far more likely to be gun owners, which may increase police anticipation of threat, according to a 2024 study by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Another study, in the New York University Law Review, noted that small jurisdictions are far less likely than larger cities to have legal and political accountability structures, such as police commissions and inspectors general, a robust media presence or an active plaintiffs’ bar.
“In the absence of external prodding, small jurisdictions may be even less likely than their big-city counterparts to fix these problems on their own,” the report’s author noted.
In small, rural areas like Craig, police are more likely to know the suspects and make assumptions about them, said Elizabeth Wang, Tanner Sholes’ attorney.
“They were primed to be in a headspace where they wanted to escalate anything that happened with Mr. Sholes,” she said.
Wang specializes in cases involving people injured by police. She said she had never seen an incident like the one Sholes encountered, in which law enforcement used a vehicle as a weapon to run over a pedestrian with premeditation.
“There’s no training on this,” she said. “There’s no policy to ever use a vehicle to hit a pedestrian.”
Sholes last year filed a federal lawsuit that accused Craig police officers and Moffat County sheriff’s personnel of excessive force and violating his constitutional rights.
Michelle Workman, Sholes’ partner and mother of his children, said she’s watched his relationship with police deteriorate over the years. Every time they interact with him, she said, it’s multiple officers with their guns drawn.
“In my mind, they want to murder Tanner,” she said.
In a small town like Craig, police concentrate on the same few people, Workman said. Once you get a name with the police department, you earn a target on your back.
“If you have a run-in before, that shouldn’t smear you as a bad person,” she said. “Everyone makes bad choices. Tanner’s biggest problem: He got in trouble and he’s never been left alone.”
Sholes said his knee still causes him a good deal of pain. A former wildland firefighter, he loves camping and hiking and running around with his kids. But the injury limits his activity, he said. He can’t chase his children like he used to. Everything has to be done a little slower.
“It’s put a damper on my whole life,” he said.
Sholes avoids public spaces for the most part out of fear of the police. He opts against taking his kids to the public pool or city functions.
His children, he said, are deathly afraid of law enforcement.
“They think every time police are called, Tanner’s gonna die,” Workman said.
What kind of message does this send to children, Sholes said.
“Cops are supposed to protect people, not hurt people,” he said. “My kids have seen the opposite of that.”
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