The 14-year-old boy charged with killing a Denver bar bouncer last month was repeatedly released from custody in a preceding juvenile case over the objection of prosecutors who thought he posed a danger to the community, according to court records obtained by The Denver Post.
The teenager was also wanted on a warrant at the time of the killing that would have kept him temporarily jailed without bond had he been arrested, records show.
The teen, whom The Post is not naming because he is a juvenile, is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of 49-year-old William “Todd” Kidd on July 10 outside the Federales Denver bar at 29th and Larimer streets in Denver’s River North Arts District.
Kidd, who worked at the bar, was intervening in a disturbance when he was shot, police have said. He died two days later on July 12.
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The teenager’s journey through Colorado’s juvenile courts highlights how the system is designed to keep children out of custody through a focus on pretrial release and a statutory cap on the number of kids who can be incarcerated in the state — an approach supporters hail as the best way to help vulnerable youths, but critics decry as soft on crime.
“The vast majority of kids going through the system are not safety risks to anybody,” said Emma Mclean-Riggs, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. “Sometimes these cases are used as leverage to produce more incarceration of children when there is not sufficient context.”
George Brauchler, a former district attorney and current Republican candidate for district attorney in the 23rd Judicial District, said while he understands the juvenile justice system’s aim to keep kids out of detention, the approach can be detrimental to both youths and broader community safety.
“We have gone so far off the deep end of the criminal justice reform spectrum that we are rolling the dice for a lot of communities because it makes us feel good about how we are treating kids,” he said.
Charged with stealing cars
The 14-year-old boy was arrested on charges of stealing cars in Douglas County in December and again in Adams County in January, court records show.
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In Douglas County, he was charged in juvenile court with motor vehicle theft, conspiracy to commit motor vehicle theft, criminal mischief and false reporting, said Eric Ross, a spokesman for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. He declined to comment further.
In Adams County, the 14-year-old was charged in juvenile court with motor vehicle theft, resisting arrest, vehicular eluding and obstructing a police officer. Chris Hopper, spokesman for the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, declined to comment on the case.
In the Adams County case, the boy on multiple occasions violated the conditions of his personal recognizance bond, records obtained by The Post show. He sometimes missed required meetings, violated his GPS monitoring and struggled to keep his GPS unit charged.
Personal recognizance bonds allow defendants to be released from custody on the promise they will return to court, rather than requiring defendants to pay money as collateral before their release. In 2021, state lawmakers required that all bonds set in juvenile cases be personal recognizance bonds.
“There was kind of a universal understanding that holding kids because their families are poor doesn’t make any sense,” Mclean-Riggs said of the 2021 change.
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In late April, Adams County prosecutors filed a motion to revoke the boy’s bond after a fifth bond violation report was filed in the case, the records show.
The teen was arrested, and during a court hearing on May 1, his attorneys asked that he be released on bond into his mother’s custody. Prosecutors objected, citing “community safety concerns” because of his GPS violations, the records show.
Magistrate Michal Lord-Blegen granted a personal recognizance bond with several conditions, including that the teenager remain on GPS monitoring, attend school and therapy, and stay away from weapons, drugs and alcohol.
Just over two weeks later, another bond violation report — the seventh overall — was filed in the case, records show. Prosecutors once again sought to revoke the boy’s bond, and the boy was arrested again.
On May 17, Lord-Blegen again allowed the teenager to be released from custody, again over the objection of prosecutors who sought for the boy to be held with no bond.
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On May 28, the 14-year-old ran away from home on his way to court, according to the records. Two days later, Lord-Blegen issued a warrant for his arrest and ordered the boy be detained on a no-bond hold when he was taken into custody.
But the teenager was not arrested again until July 16 — days after Denver police allege he shot and killed Kidd. Officers found the boy in Casper, Wyoming, police have said.
The records obtained by the Post do not specifically indicate why the magistrate issued the personal recognizance bonds, but do note that the teenager had been attending therapy, was referred to a mentor and, until the homicide, was not arrested on new charges, only on bond violations. Lord-Blegen could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The 14-year-old boy appeared in juvenile court Tuesday for a hearing in the Denver homicide case, but a judge closed the courtroom to the public after learning that members of the media were in attendance.
A focus on rehabilitation
Juvenile court operates differently than adult court and is designed to focus on rehabilitation and the child’s best interests, rather than punitive measures, attorneys told The Post. All of the attorneys who spoke with The Post were not familiar with the teenager’s case and spoke generally about juvenile justice.
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Judges can hold a child in detention without a bond if they find the child poses a substantial risk of harm to others and community-based alternatives to incarceration will not work, state law says.
But the presumption in juvenile court is that the young defendants should be released from custody whenever possible, because childhood incarceration has been proven so harmful to youths, Mclean-Riggs said.
In cases involving property crime — like motor vehicle theft — and not violent crime, youths typically will be released on bond while their cases are pending, said Tally Zuckerman, a Denver criminal defense attorney.
“I would honestly be shocked if a kid was held on a no-bond hold for a motor vehicle theft,” she said.
Children are also given extra leeway for bond violations, she added, particularly for violations like missing school or returning a positive drug test that don’t involve violence or new crimes.
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Technical violations of bond often are not a good indicator of a person’s level of threat to a community, said Tristan Gorman, policy director for the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar.
“That happens a lot with people who are poor, people who don’t have transportation, people with mental health issues or any number of things,” she said. “But it also happens a lot with teenagers who don’t have a fully developed frontal lobe. So… if it is mostly about GPS and check-ins, that is not really indicative of, is this kid safe in the community?”
Brauchler said the leeway given to youths in juvenile court has in some cases swung too far toward rehabilitation and away from accountability.
“I want us to be rehabilitation-focused where appropriate, and that applies to 98, 99% of juvenile cases,” he said. “But the rest of them, we have to have the tools in the toolbox to treat them more seriously.”
Juvenile bed cap
Colorado lawmakers have passed a series of laws over the last two decades aimed at limiting the number of juveniles held in the state’s juvenile detention centers, citing the long-term harm of childhood incarceration.
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Legislators first set a cap on the number of youths who could be detained statewide in 2003, limiting the number of available beds for juvenile detention to 479. That cap has been steadily lowered — most recently in 2021 to 215 beds. Lawmakers also allowed for an additional 22 temporary emergency beds that become available if the state hits its juvenile detention limit.
The bed cap has drawn ire in recent years as the state has neared the limit, with some prosecutors, law enforcement officers and politicians saying the ceiling pushes children who should be detained back into the community.
“From a pure logical standpoint, it makes no sense,” Brauchler said. “It takes a fixed number — not a percentage of juveniles in the state, not a percentage of juveniles in the system, not a percentage of crime, not a percentage of anything — it’s a fixed number of beds statewide, regardless of the amount of criminal activity that takes place by juveniles or the risk they pose to the community.”
Some children would be better off in detention than in their home environment, where they might face the same pressures that led to the first crime and be more likely to re-offend, said Aurora City Councilman Dustin Zvonek, who last year championed a city resolution asking the state to abolish the juvenile detention bed cap.
“They’re still little kids,” he said. “And to be running around neighborhoods with a weapon, running from SWAT officers, it’s hard to wrap your mind around — but it is a reality we face, and so we have to have a system in place that protects the Aurora community.”
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Mclean-Riggs said children who end up in the juvenile justice system have typically first been failed by myriad other systems — from education to welfare to health care — and that a holistic approach is needed, rather than a reactionary turn to incarceration.
“The place to intervene effectively for these children is years before they touch the criminal legal system,” she said “…The view that says the answer here is pretrial detention is myopic and is not accounting for all of the other systems that were supposed to hold and intervene for this child and his family.”
It’s not clear whether the bed cap played a role in the 14-year-old’s releases in Adams County.
On the morning of May 1, when he was released on bond after it was revoked, the state had 213 juveniles in detention, said Heidi Bauer, spokeswoman for the Division of Youth Services, just under the 215 limit.
On May 17, the second time he was released after a revocation, 204 juveniles were in detention at the start of the day.
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Bauer noted the number of filled beds frequently fluctuates. Over the last six months, the state’s average daily juvenile detention population has hovered between 185 and 206 youths.
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More than halfway into his first term, Mayor Mike Johnston finally met with his own Bicycle Advisory Committee and reiterated a familiar promise: Denver can increase road safety without taking any convenience away from drivers. “We want this to be a city where it is safe and easy to get around by bike or by foot,” Johnston told Westword after the meeting. “We want to build infrastructure and a culture that makes that easier, and we think we can do that without making it more difficult for drivers.”
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The mayor is wrong. If Denver is serious about making our streets safer for everyone — people driving as well as people walking, biking, rolling or taking transit — then we have to be honest about what that requires. Real safety improvements will sometimes mean slowing cars down, reallocating space or asking drivers to take a slightly longer route. In other words, we must be willing to trade a bit of convenience for a lot of safety.
We already make this trade-off all the time. Parking in front of the fire hydrant across from my house would be extremely convenient, but I don’t do it because it would put my neighbors at risk if a fire broke out. I don’t enjoy going through security screening every time I attend a Denver City Council meeting, but I accept it because it keeps a critical public forum safe. These small inconveniences are simply part of living in a community where everyone’s well-being matters.
So why is the idea of asking drivers to accept minimal inconvenience — a few extra minutes, a block or two of walking from their parking spot to their final destination — treated as politically impossible, even when it could prevent deaths and life-altering injuries?
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Denver committed to Vision Zero nearly a decade ago, pledging to eliminate traffic fatalities. Yet year after year, the death toll remains stubbornly high, topping eighty lives lost annually since the pandemic. The reason is not mysterious: City leaders have consistently prioritized driver convenience over safety, even as people continue to die on our streets.
For generations, Denver’s street designs have catered not just to driving, but to driving dangerously. The majority of streets on the city’s High Injury Network — just 5 percent of streets where half of all traffic deaths occur — are major arterials like Colfax, Federal, Colorado, Speer and Alameda. These corridors are engineered to move as many vehicles as quickly as possible. People walking and biking are left to navigate speeding traffic with minimal protection, crossing up to eight lanes just to reach the other side.
We know what works. The data is unequivocal: On streets like these, the most effective safety improvements reduce the space available for fast-moving vehicles. Road diets, narrower lanes, shorter crossings and dedicated space for sidewalks, bike lanes and bus lanes all make streets safer for everyone — including drivers — by bringing speeds down to survivable levels.
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And yet, Mayor Johnston’s recent decision to abandon the planned road diet on Alameda Avenue is only the latest example of the city retreating from proven safety measures because they might inconvenience drivers. The city noted that its revised plan for Alameda would save drivers an extra sixty seconds of driving time, compared to the original road diet.
The mayor must confront a hard truth: We cannot keep people safe without changing the status quo, and the status quo is built on prioritizing speed and convenience over human life. Denver cannot have it both ways.
So the real question for Mayor Johnston is this: How many lives is Denver willing to sacrifice to preserve driver convenience?
So far in 2025, we have lost 87 people — and counting.
NEW YORK — The NHL hits a roster freeze at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, so with defenseman Egor Zamula clearing waivers and being assigned to the American Hockey League, it left a roster spot open.
Forward Denver Barkey has been called up.
Drafted by the Flyers in the third round of the 2023 NHL draft, Barkey turned pro this season and has been impressive while skating primarily on the wing for Lehigh Valley of the AHL. The 20-year-old has 16 points (seven goals, nine assists) in 26 games for the Phantoms, primarily playing on the wing with center Lane Pederson and winger Alex Bump.
“I think right from the start, he’s played very well,” Flyers assistant general manager Brent Flahr recently told The Inquirer. “On the production side, he makes plays, he works, and the details are great. Such a smart player. He’s got to get stronger and build up his body to handle the grind and but so far, so good.
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“Down there, he’s been arguably our best forward a lot of nights, and coaches love them plays, plays a lot. He’s certainly going in the right direction.”
» READ MORE: Flyers Q&A: Brent Flahr dishes on prospects Porter Martone, Jett Luchanko, and more
Well, the direction now is east to New York City ahead of the Flyers’ matchup with the New York Rangers on Saturday afternoon (12:30 p.m., NBCSP). The kid from Ontario is in line to make his debut at the World’s Most Famous Arena.
“I call him like a little mini [Travis Konecny],” Flyers director of player development Riley Armstrong said of Barkey over the summer. “He’s all over the puck. He’s grimy when he doesn’t have the puck. He’s always working to get the puck back.
“He’s really good with his stick picking pockets, transitioning, and his eyes are up; I don’t think a little guy like that skating around, his head down, is going to last very long in the game.
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“But when you watch him go into corners, and he’s not afraid of that, he’s quick to get in, he’s quick to get out.”
Some have questioned Barkey’s size at 5-foot-10, 173 pounds, but no one questions his grit, moxie, will, and determination. Last season, he notched 25 goals and 82 points in 50 regular-season games before adding another nine goals and 20 points in 11 postseason games for London of the Ontario Hockey League.
On June 1, he captained the Knights to the Memorial Cup championship despite suffering a high-ankle sprain in the OHL Final. In the finale of the Memorial Cup, against the projected No. 1 for this June’s draft, Gavin McKenna, and Medicine Hat of the Western Hockey League, Barkey drove play and scored a pair of goals.
A month later, he was at the Flyers development camp but did not participate. He did, however, try.
“[Barkey] always comes to me every morning, ‘Hey, do you think you can get me out on the ice?’ No, no, you’re done,” Armstrong said with a chuckle in early July.
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The rest helped. He was again impressive at the Flyers’ rookie camp and in a game against their Rangers counterparts in early September in Allentown.
Barkey opened eyes with his speed, hockey IQ, puck possession and patience, and high-end passing ability. Looking completely healed from his high-ankle sprain, the forward used his quickness, leverage, and ability to win pucks to beat the defense at every turn and notched a goal.
It appears that his summer of eating Italian giant subs — Mike’s way, minus the onions — at Jersey Mike’s with his buddy, and former London teammate, Oliver Bonk, to add weight paid off. Phantoms coach John Snowden called him “a heck of a hockey player” in September.
“Continue to get bigger, stronger,” Barkey said of his summer plans at development camp. “It’s a big jump next year. I’m going to be playing against older men and strong guys. So, continuing to get stronger, faster, and I think the biggest thing is just using my brain and then finding a way to adjust. It’s a different game in pro.”
And Barkey has adjusted well to the pro ranks, skating on the wing of the Phantoms’ top line, which drives play and is relied on for offensive swings. His fellow winger, Bump, was actually the one many thought would be called up.
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The kid from Minnesota, who led Western Michigan to the NCAA championship in April, was pegged by everyone, including The Inquirer, to break camp with the Flyers; however, he was sent down after a poor main training camp. After a slow start in Lehigh Valley, he now has 20 points (seven goals, 13 assists) in 26 games in Allentown.
On the first of Bo Nix’s four touchdown passes against Green Bay, he did what he does more frequently than any quarterback in football.
Nix escaped from the pocket and took off running. He moved up and to the left before hitting Michael Bandy for a 20-yard catch-and-scamper.
The next three touchdowns, though, are where the Broncos offense can dream about a deep postseason run or even more.
Nix, operating from the gun, delivered strikes of all shapes and sizes and did so with clean footwork in the pocket.
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He identified coverage, took a short, one-step drop and fired a perfectly placed low ball to Lil’Jordan Humphrey. Then a three-step drop to get the ball up and down with beautiful pace and timing to Courtland Sutton one-on-one up the right sideline.
Nix polished off the fourth touchdown when he five-step dropped, hitched up in the pocket twice and uncorked a rocket up the seam for Troy Franklin on a motion and route concept the Broncos have made hay on most of the year.
The Packers game represented a breakout as Nix completed 23 of 34 passes for 302 yards and the four touchdowns, but his game’s been heating up more broadly over the past month.
He had an efficient day in a much different style against Las Vegas, completing 31 of 38 passes and engineering three battering-ram touchdown drives. He threw for 616 yards in the two weeks before that in wins over Washington and Kansas City.
In those four games, Nix has completed 69.5% of his passes for 282.5 yards per game and thrown five touchdowns and an interception. Before that stretch, he completed 60.9% and averaged 212 yards per game.
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What’s changed? Start from the ground up.
“I think his footwork has got a lot better,” offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi said Thursday. “And the way he handles himself in the pocket, trusting the protection. We’ve talked about it all year and the last four games he’s done a really good job of that.
“He’s moving when he needs to and he’s hanging in there when he needs to.”
Head coach Sean Payton earlier this season said the quarterbacks get some specific footwork drilling done during a normal game week but not a ton. They’ll work a particular concept or drop between periods, but for the most part, the work is plan-specific.
Nix, though, has been working on his own pocket presence in his own ways in recent weeks.
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“I think he’s probably one of the best … at learning from mistakes, and looking in the mirror and seeing what his weaknesses are,” tight end Evan Engram told The Post.
“He’s sitting in there, he’s trusting the protection, he’s letting it rip. And that’s something that he saw. And he worked on. And like – I can’t say how hard that is. I’ve never done it in my life. You’ve got freakin’ monsters rushing you, every play. And credit to the O-line, too.
The staff also appears to be doing a better job of helping get Nix into good rhythm. Part of that is by playing more frequently from under center. The touchdowns outlined above came out of shotgun, but one commonly held belief is that playing from under center helps keep footwork clean because a quarterback is forced to do it coming back from the center.
Since the Broncos returned from their bye week, the uptick has been notable.
Denver averaged 29.4% of offensive snaps under center the first 11 games. Over the past three, the number is 42.8%.
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Nix has attempted nearly half as many passes from under center the past three games (25) as he did in the first 11 (51). That’s partly because he’s playing more from under center, though Denver’s under center pass rate has also jumped up from 24.5% over the first 11 games to 29.3% the past three weeks.
Nix only completed 1 of 6 passes against Green Bay for 16 yards from under center but the week before, he was 10 of 10 for 71 yards against Las Vegas.
“Each game is different relative to when we look at gun runs, under center runs, try to self-scout ourselves enough to where there’s enough play-action maybe under center, drop back,” Payton said between Vegas and Green Bay, adding that he thought Nix made a quick transition to playing under center even though he hardly did it in college.
“I think that hasn’t been a big learning curve. I think it’s gone pretty smooth.”
Particularly since the bye week, the Broncos have leaned more and more into it. Payton and Lombardi say the usage is dependent on individual game plans.
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The longer this uptick continues, though, the more it looks like a philosophical shift.
Broncos reporter Luca Evans contributed to this story.
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