On June 20, the now-defunct Sangre de Cristo Sentinel Newspaper published a sensational multi-page article titled “Happy Flag Day! Almost. Leftist violence comes to happy valley” that claimed an “enraged lib” drove by their Flag Day celebration on Saturday, June 14, and pointed a gun at the crowd. The article was authored by the late George Gramlich (who passed in September) and assisted in its publication by the Sentinel’s Vice-President, Fred Hernandez.
The long and often incoherent article tells how a group of Sentinel supporters, one of whom was Custer County Coronor Brad Baltzly, had gathered outside of the Sentinel office on the corner of 6th Street and Highway 69 in Westcliffe to counter-protest the planned “No Kings” march along Main Street of Westcliffe. The article falsely claims that the “No Kings” marchers had tried to cause a confrontation with the counter-protesters on the sidewalk outside the Sentinel. The march and its route had been announced for weeks, and the organizers had alerted the Sheriff’s Office.
After the marchers had passed, the Sentinel counter-protesters continued to wave flags at the intersection and gradually moved off the sidewalk and onto the highway outside of the office. At this point, the Sentinel falsely claimed a man pulled a gun on the crowd and specifically targeted a Sentinel woman employee. The core of the article stated: “However, during this period and now afterward, there was a newer, four door Jeep Wrangler that kept driving slowly past us. Every time he drove by, he shouted (LOUD) hard core obscenities at our flag wavers including, of course, calling us “nazis”. Now remember this is an older crowd. Probably most of our crew are retired. Regular, polite, conservative Christians spending a few hours celebrating our great country. And this guy keeps coming back screaming at old men and old ladies waving the American Flag, constantly using the “F” word. Each pass he gets louder and crazier. Finally, at maybe his fourth or more pass, he drives past me and another male flag waver and stops right in front of one of ladies waving. Very close to her. (The woman happens to work at the Sentinel. Me and another male were just a few feet to the left of the lady. To her right were a bunch of flag wavers.) The guy, his face contorted with rage, starts screaming like a mad man at the lady in a very threatening manner using extreme obscenities (including the “F” word). Finally, the lady yells back at the punk and then a few seconds later she steps back and freezes. (The guy is on our side of the road, driving left to right past our wavers. His passenger window is next to us.) The guy keeps screaming and starts to move past us towards the other wavers (he is going west). Just as he starts moving we all hear, “He’s got a gun!” from multiple people.”
The article continues, “The woman says he had pulled a pistol out, wracked it right in front of her and then pointed it directly at her, the male standing next to her, and as he started driving, at other people. The lady said he stretched his arm across the cab and had the gun right by the passenger window, only a few feet from her. Little did this rocket scientist know, but at the end of our line was our County Coroner, Brad Baltzly, and coming to his side, Assistant Coroner, Nikita Phillips. Both had seen what was happening and Brad whips out his cell phone and is filming it. At the same time, he grabs his police radio and calls it in to our SO. Game on!”
However, a video of the altercations shows that the Sentinel’s article was a fabrication. The footage shows Gramlich, openly carrying a firearm and supported by seven others who were also visibly armed or likely armed, step into the highway in what looked like an attempt to stop the Jeep. As the Jeep comes to a stop to avoid striking Hernandez, Hernandez steps past Gramlich, pointing and screaming at the driver of the Jeep, “[Explicative] you!” Violently, Hernandez pulls open the door of the Jeep and appears to be ready to assault the driver, with his armed supporters directly behind him in the margins of the highway.
Hernandez suddenly slammed the door shut, with the driver yelling for him not to touch his vehicle repeatedly. Yvonne Philips, partner of the deceased Gramlich, can be seen with a Trump flag, sprinting towards the Jeep while also visibly armed. Others, including Coroner Baltzly and his Assistant Coroner and Fiancé Nikkita Philips, continue to close in on the Jeep. After several seconds, the Jeep slowly pulled away from the group as others briefly jog after it while armed and screaming “[Explicative] you” at the departing driver.
Nobody in the crowd acted as if a person were pointing a gun at them. Nobody ducked or tried to move away from the Jeep. Further, the crowd did not start yelling, “He has a gun!”
Clearly, to some witnesses at the scene, it was obvious Hernandez should not have opened the door. A woman’s voice states, “He should have never opened his door.” Baltzly can be seen using his radio to call in the vehicle description to the Sheriff’s Office. Less than four miles south of town, the Jeep was pulled over by Custer County Officers responding to Baltzly’s report, and the driver was arrested without incident. During the search, the Officers located a handgun in the Jeep.
The owner of the Jeep was not an out-of-town “lib” as claimed by the Sentinel. Brett Tuthill has lived in the Valley for five years. He is a veteran who served in the United States Marine Corps, and his wife is also a veteran; they have two children. After Tuthill was arrested, he spent three days in jail and was charged with four counts of felony menacing and 10 counts of harassment. Hernandez was never investigated or charged for stopping and attempting to enter the Jeep while possibly armed and screaming obscenities.
The Sentinel article completely omits that both Gramlich and Hernandez had stopped the Jeep on a public highway. It further omits the key detail that Hernandez had opened the Jeep door while pointing at Tuthill and screaming at him. They falsely claimed that Tuthill had specifically targeted Yvonne Philips when the reality was that she ran up to the Jeep in support of Hernandez. Nobody in the crowd acted as if someone had pointed a gun at them. In fact, most of the crowd followed Hernandez onto the highway, many of them screaming at Tuthill. Finally, it is easy to see into the Jeep, and there is no visible movement from Tuthill’s arm, indicating he never pointed a gun at Hernandez or others.
Other contradictions abound between the Sentinel article and reality. While Gramlich tried to hint in his article that Tuthill was possibly a gunman hired by local liberals and pretended that he did not know his name, Hernandez certainly knew who Tuthill was, as he had been served frequently by him at Tony’s Mountain Pizza when Tuthill had worked there. The Sentinel had spent much of the article falsely claiming that most of the No Kings marchers were not from Westcliffe and playing on a theme they had published before, that the No Kings marchers across the nation were just hired actors.
And as for Hernandez, an hour earlier, he had stood in the middle of the sidewalk attempting to block the No Kings marchers with his open carry firearm, deliberately holstered but angled so that the approaching marchers could see it. As they passed, he called the participants “communists,” “pedophiles,” and “Bolsheviks.” The marchers stepped off the sidewalk and moved around him (see photos below).
– Tribune photos by Jordan Hedberg
The Sheriff and District Attorney’s Office’s mishandling of the case
While the fabrications of the Sentinel about the case are concerning on their own, more problematic is the mishandling of the investigation by the Sheriff’s and the District Attorney’s Offices.
On Tuesday, December 2, District Judge Lauren Swan ruled that the District Attorney’s Office had once again violated discovery rules by failing to provide Tuthill the witness statements, the foundation of allegations of crimes, by the 21-day deadline.
Court filings by Tuthill’s defense team show that despite the incident taking place on June 14, they had not received the 10 witness statements or the radio call made by Baltzly. Because no law enforcement officer witnessed the incident themselves, these 10 witnesses’ statements and the radio call made up the entirety of the allegations against Tuthill.
The failure to disclose the witness statements violated Tuthill’s right under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States to confront one’s accusers and due process. Court filings show that Tuthill’s defense team reached out three separate times over three months, asking for the missing evidence. By September 26, Tuthill filed a “Motion to dismiss for failure to produce evidence.” Only after this, on September 30, did the Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office hand over the witness statements. However, during the hearing, it seems that they still have failed to produce Baltzly’s radio call, which is one of the most crucial parts of the case.
Interestingly, the motion to dismiss the case against Tuthill was authored by Karen Lintott, a former colleague and, until recently, an employee of the current District Attorney Jeff Lindsey. She stated in the motion that discovery issues that haunted the 11th Judicial District under the former District Attorney Linda Stanley are still ongoing under Jeff Lindsey. “Undersigned counsel as a prosecutor in the 11th under former DA Stanley, and until very recently under DA Lindsey, is aware that compliance with Rule 16 is still a challenge for the 11th. Blame no longer can be shifted to the former administration for the continued pattern of neglect in the 11th as evidenced here.”
During the hearing on December 2, Tuthill’s defense stated that they had finally received the witness statements on September 30, but the radio call from Baltzly was still missing. Representing the Office of the District Attorney at the hearing was Deputy District Attorney Curtis Tomme, who called two witnesses to the stand, including Undersheriff Susan Barnes. The witnesses claimed they had uploaded the evidence, but that computer problems had caused the discovery violations. Tomme acknowledged that he had no excuse for missing and not responding to the defense’s emails, but concluded with an appeal to heaven: “We are all sinners in the eyes of God.”
Judge Swan was not swayed, stating that the District Attorney’s Office had repeatedly failed to meet basic discovery rule deadlines, and not responding to the defense for over three months was inexcusable. She indicated that she wanted these violations to end and punished the District Attorney’s Office with a sanction, giving the defense the chance to submit jury instructions during trial. She admonished the District Attorney’s Office, stating that while Tuthill had been waiting for the key information from his accusers, he had served time in jail, had his guns removed, had been subject to sobriety testing, and had been on bond conditions. She reminded everyone in the courtroom that everyone has a right to a fair trial.
It should be noted that the Sentinel was a political ally of Sheriff Smith before its closure, and the armed crowd that had entered the highway behind Hernandez to confront Tuthill was composed of some of his most vocal supporters in the community. For Smith, investigating Hernadez or asking the DA to have the case dismissed based on the facts would cause him political blowback from his core political supporters.
While there is no visual evidence in the video that Tuthill pointed a gun at the crowd, Colorado law is clear that if a reasonable person is in fear for harm to their person or life, they are allowed to brandish a weapon and even use deadly force in their defense. While thankfully the tense situation outside the Sentinel did not end in gunfire, the video evidence clearly shows a large group of armed men and women on the highway screaming at Tuthill, with Gramlich and Hernandez attempting to block his vehicle. Colorado is a “stand your ground state,” meaning that someone in Tuthill’s situation, lawfully in a public road, had no duty to retreat when Hernandez tried to enter the car or when an armed Yvonne Philips charged at his Jeep shortly after Hernandez had slammed the Jeep door shut.
In short, the video shows Tuthill as the victim of menacing, yet he was the one arrested for it. His arrest quickly spread on Facebook when the Sheriff posted a press release about the arrest. Hundreds of people shared and commented on the post, and news stations across Colorado spread Tuthill’s mugshot and the Sheriff’s press release.
Draft copies of this Tribune article were sent to the District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office, asking for comment on why, after the video evidence and the Judge’s ruling on discovery violations, they are still pursuing the case? In addition, why was Fred Hernandez never investigated or charged for his obstruction of a sidewalk while armed, obstruction of a highway while possibly armed, and for violently trying to enter Tuthill’s Jeep?
Sheriff Smith responded, “Mr. Hedberg, while the Sheriff’s Office cannot comment on the specifics of any open case, several general points about how the criminal justice process works may help clarify some misconceptions presented in your draft article.” The full points he provided are listed at the end of this post.
District Attorney Jeff Lindsey responded, “Mr. Hedberg, pursuant to Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 3.6 and 3.8 respectively, this office is not commenting on the pending case.”
The Tribune also reached out to Fred Hernandez for comment on why he first tried to block the sidewalk, while armed, from the No Kings marchers and, further, why he omitted from his article that he had not only tried to stop Tuthill’s Jeep on the highway, but proceeded to try to enter it? To date, he has not responded to our requests for comment.
– Jordan Hedberg
Custer County Sheriff’s full statement regarding Tuthill
Role of the Sheriff’s Office
The Sheriff’s Office has a legal duty to investigate reported crimes, even when no deputy personally observes the conduct at the time it occurs. Deputies collect statements, physical evidence, and other facts to be forwarded as part of an investigative report, but they do not decide what criminal charges, if any, will ultimately be filed.
The Sheriff’s Office is required to remain impartial and to apply the law uniformly, regardless of who is involved. Professional standards and Constitutional due process require that law enforcement, prosecutors, and courts avoid favoritism and maintain fairness throughout the process. The Sheriff’s Office adamantly denies showing favoritism in this or any other case. The sheriff’s office does not and has not suppressed evidence in this case or any other case.
Role of the District
Attorney
Once a report is completed, it is submitted to the District Attorney’s Office, which has sole authority to decide whether to file charges, what charges to file, and whether to modify, reduce, or dismiss charges. Victims or law enforcement do not “press charges” in Colorado; only the prosecutor can initiate, maintain, or dismiss a criminal case in court.
Role of the Jury
If a case proceeds to trial, it is the jury’s responsibility to decide whether the prosecution has proven the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Jurors must base their decision only on admissible evidence and testimony presented in the courtroom, not on outside information, rumors, or media coverage.
Pretrial Publicity and Venue
Extensive or inflammatory pretrial publicity can raise concerns about a defendant’s ability to receive a fair trial before an impartial jury. In such circumstances, the defense may request remedies such as thorough voir dire (juror questioning), jury instructions, trial delay, or a motion to change venue to another county if it appears a fair jury cannot be seated locally.
– Lloyd “Rich” Smith, Sheriff
