[NEWS] Older of two students arrested in Colorado shooting appears in court – Loganspace AI

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CASTLE ROCK, Colorado (Reuters) – The older of two college students accused of opening fireplace in a suburban Denver high college, killing one classmate and injuring eight others, made his preliminary court appearance on Wednesday, facing abolish and attempted-abolish charges.

The 18-year-long-established suspect being charged as an grownup, Devon Erickson, sat silently at a minute table along with his head bowed and his fingers shackled to his waist, flanked by two defense attorneys as a pair of sheriff’s deputies stood appropriate at the encourage of them.

Cramped of plan, carrying an orange-pink detention center uniform, his longish, tasseled shadowy hair was partly dyed shiny lavender.

His attorneys asked the possess to allow defense investigators to oversee processing of the crime scene by legislation enforcement officers, however prosecutors objected. But the Douglas County District Court docket possess denied that ask.

No plea was entered within the case, and the defendant was ordered to come encourage to court on Friday.

Erickson was being held on suspicion of a single depend of first-degree abolish and 29 counts of attempted abolish, in step with court files, though it was now now not straight sure how prosecutors arrived at that collection of charges. Eight college students wounded within the capturing survived.

His accused accomplice, who’s below the age of 18 and has now now not been publicly known, is being charged individually as a juvenile, authorities said.

The 2 kids are accused of opening fireplace on fellow college students in two lecture rooms at the Science, Skills, Engineering and Math (STEM) College in Highlands Ranch, about 25 miles (40 km) south of Denver.

The 18-year-long-established student killed within the capturing, known by his family as Kendrick Ray Castillo, was a senior appropriate days away from commencement, police said on Wednesday as they continued to gaze for a motive within the assault.

He was one among several college students, in step with eyewitness accounts, who charged at the two assailants in Tuesday’s capturing.

Denver’s ABC television affiliate, citing an unidentified police supply, reported on Tuesday that one among the suspects, it looks that the younger of the two, was born male however most regularly known as female and had been bullied for it.

Sheriff Tony Spurlock declined to respond to a reporter’s inquire of about whether or now now not the younger suspect was transgender.

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“Correct now we’re identifying the particular person as a female, because that’s where we’re at,” he said. “We at first view the juvenile was a male by appearance.”

Spurlock said the suspect had been most regularly known as male “earlier than the detectives had been in a location to secure the medical – and detectives had been in a location to direct to her.”

Tuesday’s assault occurred lower than a month after the Twentieth anniversary of the Columbine Excessive College massacre in nearby Littleton, about 5 miles (8 km) from Highlands Ranch, implemented by two college students who shot 13 other folk to death earlier than committing suicide.

Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Further reporting by Jonathan Allen and Peter Szekely in Recent York and Andrew Hay in Taos, Recent Mexico; Writing by Scott Malone and Steve Gorman; modifying by Jeffrey Benkoe, Bill Trott and Susan Thomas

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