More people died in police chases in this Denver suburb than in the state’s biggest cities

For years, Simone Pineda’s twin sister spoke for her.In elementary school, teachers placed them in separate classes just so Simone had a chance to learn independently from her outgoing, outspoken, stubborn identical twin. Simone was largely content in Savannah’s shadow, and, when it came down to it, Savannah usually followed her lead.

So when Simone wanted to go live with their mother for the first time when the twins were 14, Savannah agreed. They moved into a home in Denver’s Villa Park neighborhood, where their mother pulled them into a life they’d never known before: fast money, stolen cars, drugs, instability. Their mother regularly kicked the twins out; they never knew what would set her off.



When she put them out, the twins would call around to sleep at a friend’s house, or they’d steal a car, and sleep in that. One December day when the twins were 16, Savannah and her boyfriend climbed into a stolen car after they’d been kicked out. They sat on top of buckled seatbelts and headed to a friend’s house for the night.

Simone stayed home.The boyfriend, 16, was behind the wheel. He was on methamphetamine, fentanyl, marijuana.

When police lights flashed behind them, he took off. Deputies pursued. Minutes later, he ran a red light and T-boned a Westminster police car.

Savannah was killed.Now, more than three years later, Simone is left speaking for her twin.“Don’t get me wrong, my sister made her mistakes,” she said.

“But I don’t think she deserved to die for that. ..

.I really just want Westminster to be held accountable.”The Westminster Police Department recorded 376 vehicle pursuits over the last five years — more than twice as many chases as police recorded in Denver, or in Aurora, or in Colorado Springs, according to data collected by The Denver Post on nearly 1,400 police pursuits across 14 of Colorado’s most populous cities and four metro counties between 2020 and 2024.

Across those 18 cities and counties, seven people died in pursuits over those five years.Four of those deaths happened in Westminster.“For a jurisdiction to be that much smaller than Denver, chasing at twice the rate and producing a disproportionate share of the bad outcomes, that is a red flag,” said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha.

The Post examined the region’s approach to police pursuits after the Aurora Police Department quietly broadened its policy in October to allow officers to chase more suspects. Aurora police officers, long limited to pursuing only people suspected of dangerous felonies, can now pursue people suspected of driving under the influence and drivers of stolen vehicles, a move Chief Todd Chamberlain said is necessary to curb crime.Aurora’s new policy bucks the trend across the Front Range, where the majority of law enforcement agencies included in The Post’s review limit pursuits to situations in which the driver is suspected of a violent felony or poses an immediate risk of injury or death to others if not quickly apprehended.

“We are in the public safety business, and pushing another driver to their limits — in a college town with bicyclists and people walking all over the place — that flies in the face of public safety,” said Jeff Swoboda, police chief in Fort Collins, where officers recorded just six pursuits in five years. “..

.We regularly say, ‘Another day, another way.’ We will figure out other ways to go about capturing that person.

”In Westminster, where policy allows officers to chase for anything but a traffic infraction, Chief Norm Haubert said pursuits are part of the job. Officers there have pursued trespassing and shoplifting suspects, drivers with fake or missing plates, drivers suspected of being drunk or high.Westminster police Chief Norm Haubert speaks during an interview at the police department in Westminster on Thursday, March 13, 2025.

(Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)“As the police chief, I know that our community expects us to apprehend those that are disturbing our community and victimizing our community,” he said. “And our community, quite honestly, is tired of being victimized. And so it is a balance of, how are we going to apprehend these offenders and hold them accountable?”Across 1,397 police pursuits over the last five years, 10% of chases ended with at least one person injured, the data from the 18 jurisdictions examined by The Post showed.

At least 179 people were hurt, including 82 suspects, 31 officers, and 24 bystanders and citizens, according to data provided by the agencies.In Denver, where police engaged in 160 pursuits, about 9% of chases ended in injury, The Post found. In Colorado Springs, where police chased drivers 116 times, that number was 5%, The Post found.

But in Aurora, with 126 pursuits, 25% of chases resulted in injury — a much higher rate than in similar jurisdictions. The seven people killed in crashes during pursuits included two drivers, four passengers in the fleeing vehicle and, in Aurora, a bystander. The Post’s count does not include people who were killed in police shootings immediately after pursuits.

Among those killed in pursuit crashes, the oldest person was 42.Savannah, at 16, was the youngest.This crime scene photo from the Colorado State Patrol shows the aftermath of a fatal Westmister police pursuit at West 92nd Avenue and Harlan Street on Dec.

29, 2021, in which the 16-year-old driver of a stolen Kia Optima crashed into a Westminster police vehicle, killing 16-year-old Savannah Pineda, who was a passenger in the stolen car. (Photo courtesy of Colorado State Patrol)Hundreds of pursuitsWestminster’s permissive pursuits policy paints a picture of how chases unfold when officers have broad discretion. The agency recorded a vehicle pursuit, on average, every five days over the last five years, the data shows.

During a single seven-day span in January 2023, officers pursued a driver with a missing front plate (the 10:30 p.m. chase topped out at 85 mph on Interstate 25), a couple in a stolen Subaru (90 mph on West 112th Avenue at 5 p.

m.), a reckless driver (80 mph on Federal Boulevard at 1 a.m.

) and a pair of theft suspects (50 mph at 10:30 a.m. on West 80th Avenue).

None of those suspects were arrested.Instead, officers ended each of the pursuits when they deemed conditions were too dangerous to continue. Officers called off the chases when the driver with a missing plate avoided a tire-deflation device and reached the interstate; when the stolen Subaru neared a busy intersection at 90 mph; when the reckless driver started throwing items out a window at police; and when the theft suspects cut across three lanes of traffic, ran a red light and started driving on the wrong side of the road.

Click to enlargeHaubert cited officers’ ability to end pursuits as an important safety measure — officers who terminate chases must immediately pull over or make a U-turn, he said.“Once they get into a pursuit, it is a constant balance of assessing the risk factors and how this might affect the community if this continues, versus the need to make that immediate apprehension,” he said.But The Post found Westminster officers sometimes ended pursuits moments before crashes.

In January 2024, an officer following a suspect who drove away from a targeted traffic stop was told to cancel the pursuit as the driver sped around 70 mph or 80 mph on Federal Boulevard.“As I began to slow down, stop and turn around to drive in the opposite direction, I saw a dust cloud erupt,” Officer Jesse Robinson wrote in a report. The driver had crashed into another car.

Police reported no one was hurt.In May 2020, a Westminster police officer spotted a stolen truck in a motel parking lot on Mariposa Street around 2 a.m.

He followed the truck for a short distance until the driver started to speed up, then the officer began a pursuit. Other officers put out stop sticks — a tire-deflation device — and the truck hit the sticks at the intersection of 112th Avenue and Decatur Street.The pursuit continued even as sparks flew from the truck’s now-deflated front tire, with the driver pushing to 70 mph on Federal Boulevard.

The driver turned into a neighborhood, and the truck’s left tire flew off. The driver kept going, returning to Lowell Boulevard and increasing his speed.The Westminster officer in pursuit wrote in a report that he realized he should end the chase.

“I decided to terminate the pursuit and began to slow down, but before I could air that over the radio, the vehicle continued south on Lowell through a red light without slowing. The vehicle then hit a dip on the south side of 92nd Ave. and appeared to become airborne,” Officer Tabe Skalla wrote in a report.

Westminster police repeated the officer’s claim that he was slowing down before the crash in a later news release — but a subsequent investigation by the Colorado State Patrol found that the patrol cars were going at least 80 mph when the truck crashed.Officers arrived at the crash to find the driver, 19-year-old Matthew Hesser, dead. His passenger, 17-year-old Hope Ishak, had been ejected from the truck and thrown into a retaining wall in front of Westminster Fire Station 2.

She was also dead.“These were kids,” said Layla Gantz, Hope’s aunt. “It wasn’t like they were professional criminals.

She was a young, beautiful girl who got cheated out of graduating, cheated out of prom, cheated out of being a mom.”A family photo of Hope Ishak is projected onto a screen set up by the photographer near the intersection at 92nd Avenue and Lowell Boulevard in Westminster where she died after the vehicle she was in crashed during a pursuit by Westminster police on May 7, 2020. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)What is your police agency’s approach to pursuits? Find it here:Adams County Sheriff’s OfficeArapahoe County Sheriff’s OfficeArvada Police DepartmentAurora Police DepartmentBoulder Police Department Broomfield Police DepartmentCastle Rock Police DepartmentColorado Springs Police Department Denver Police DepartmentDouglas County Sheriff’s OfficeFort Collins Police Department Greeley Police DepartmentJefferson County Sheriff’s OfficeLakewood Police DepartmentLongmont Police DepartmentLoveland Police DepartmentPueblo Police DepartmentThornton Police DepartmentWestminster Police DepartmentHope had been in foster care — in the custody of the Jefferson County Department of Human Services — before the pursuit, according to the Colorado State Patrol.

She’d run away a few days before and was listed as a missing person when she died.Autopsies showed both she and Hesser had methamphetamine and other drugs in their systems, and both had open warrants for their arrests, the state patrol investigation found.After Hope’s death, Gantz started an online petition calling for Westminster to limit police pursuits.

City officials expressed condolences but did nothing else, she said.“They just think they are justified because they have a badge,” Gantz said.Every pursuit is carefully reviewed, Haubert said, with layers of supervisors considering whether the officers acted within policy, what drove their decision-making and whether changes should be made going forward.

“There is a system in place. It’s been in place for many years. We hold the officers to a high standard,” he said.

“We hold them accountable, but we also hold the supervisors and ourselves accountable, making sure that they are adhering to the policy — understanding that our policy is different than some of the other agencies.”Westminster police found officers acted within department policy in all three of its fatal pursuits, as well as in each of the January 2023 pursuits mentioned in this story. No officers were disciplined in connection with those chases.

The police department hasn’t identified any wider pattern of officers calling off pursuits too late, the chief said. Officers can’t control what happens after a pursuit ends, he added.“Obviously, up until that point, we haven’t been able to control what the suspect is doing,” he said.

“And when we disengage from the pursuit, we still are not able to control what the suspect is doing. So from there, although horrifically tragic, and tragic for our community and for the family, the actions of that suspect are still out of our control.”Gantz still talks to Hope each morning, even five years after her death, she said.

The teenager loved animals, especially cats. She was creative, smart. And she’s missed.

Every Sunday, Gantz watches an old video of Hope singing “Just Give Me a Reason” by Pink.“I tell her I’m sorry,” Gantz said. “I’m sorry nobody was there to protect her.

”Layla Gantz holds a photo and the ashes of her niece, Hope Ishak, who died in a Westminster police pursuit in 2020 at age 17, at Gantz’s home in New Braunfels, Texas, on April 13, 2025. (Photo by Brenda Bazán/Special to The Denver Post)Nine secondsIn Savannah’s case, Westminster police officers ended their pursuit nine seconds before the fatal crash.The pursuit started at Federal Boulevard and West 64th Avenue in Adams County, when a sheriff’s deputy ran the license plate for the Kia Optima that Savannah and her boyfriend were in and realized the car was stolen.

It was 1:03 a.m. on Dec.

29, 2021, police records show. The deputy followed the 16-year-olds as they drove north on Federal. He didn’t activate his emergency lights until they crossed under U.

S. 36. Then, the deputy flashed his lights.

Savannah’s boyfriend hit the gas, speeding north on Federal. Deputies put out stop sticks at Federal and West 84th Avenue and shredded the Kia’s rear tire, which sent sparks flying. The deputies kept chasing as the boyfriend passed West 92nd Avenue traveling 90 mph, then swung west onto West 104th Avenue.

The Adams County sheriff’s deputies ended their pursuit when the Kia reached Sheridan Boulevard, the edge of their jurisdiction. They turned off their lights and sirens, but couldn’t find a place to turn off and ended up following the vehicle longer, according to the Colorado State Patrol. They saw Savannah’s boyfriend turn on Westminster Boulevard and alerted Westminster police at 1:09 a.

m.A Westminster police officer spotted the vehicle minutes later at Pierce Street and West 92nd. He pulled a U-turn to follow behind it.

The car slowed like it might stop. The officer turned on his police lights at 1:16 a.m.

But 18 seconds later, the officer radioed that the Kia sped away, that he’d ended the pursuit, was turning off his lights and pulling over.Nine seconds after that, Savannah’s boyfriend ran a red light at about 75 mph and slammed into a Westminster police car in the intersection of West 92nd and Harlan Street, smashing the front of the police car and setting off the airbags. The officer and a person doing a ride-along that night were both injured, not seriously.

The Kia was crushed. Savannah’s boyfriend screamed at her to wake up.“Princess, I’m sorry,” he said, according to a state patrol report.

An accident reconstruction report shows how the driver of a stolen car crashed into a Westminster police car on Dec. 29, 2021, at the intersection of Harlan Street and West 92nd Avenue. Savannah Pineda, 16, was killed.

(Image courtesy of Colorado State Patrol)A Westminster police news release about the crash later made no mention of the pursuit by Adams County deputies. The department said only that officers had learned the stolen car might be in the area, then spotted it with a blown-out tire and hazard lights flashing.“Westminster police did not pursue the vehicle,” the news release said.

How Westminster counts pursuitsHaubert, Westminster’s police chief, thinks his department might have over-counted its pursuits.Between 2020 and late 2023, the agency considered any incident in which an officer tried to stop a vehicle and then followed it when it did not stop to be a pursuit, he said. But in late 2023 or early 2024, the agency changed its internal approach to count incidents as pursuits only if the suspect driver made an “overt act” to avoid officers, Haubert said.

“An example of that would be traffic officers running radar on the highway,” he said. “They get a vehicle that’s going 80 miles an hour. Traffic officer gets there, they get behind them with their lights and sirens.

The vehicle doesn’t make an overt act to avoid the officer, but they continue on at 80 miles an hour.”Photos from the Colorado State Patrol show the wreckage of a truck driven by Matthew Hesser, 19. He and a passenger in the truck, Hope Ishak, 17, died in a Westminster police pursuit in 2020.

(Images courtesy of Colorado State Patrol)Before, Westminster would consider that event to be a pursuit because the officer followed the suspect with their lights and sirens on, he said. But now, they would not count that as a pursuit, but as an eluding or failure to yield, because the driver did not make an “overt act” to avoid the stop, the chief said.Westminster recorded 96 pursuits in 2020, 93 in 2021, 73 in 2022, 76 in 2023, and 38 in 2024 for a total of 376 pursuits, records show.

Officers followed suspects for at least some period of time in each of those incidents, Haubert said.“Whether we were behind them for five minutes or five seconds, we said that was a pursuit,” Haubert said.The department was unable to provide a breakdown of which of those pursuits might now be considered eludings.

Spokeswoman Samantha Spitz also could not provide a count of eluding incidents for any year except 2024, when she said the department recorded 72 eludings.Westminster’s 38 pursuits in 2024 is the same as the number of pursuits in Denver that year, a jurisdiction nearly five times bigger geographically and with six times Westminster’s population.In Denver, the city considers an incident to be an eluding when an officer attempts to stop a vehicle and the vehicle takes off, but the officer does not follow.

The city recorded 4,561 eludings between 2020 and 2024. Officers carried out 160 pursuits.Thornton police recorded 2,738 eludings across those five years, and pursued 99 times.

In Arvada, a neighboring city to Westminster with a similar population, the city recorded 898 eludings between 2021 and 2024, spokesman Dave Snelling said. Arvada pursued those fleeing suspects just 10 times over that four-year span. The city limits its pursuits to situations in which the driver has committed, is about to commit or is wanted for a violent felony, the department’s policy shows.

“A great percentage of them are going to be attempted traffic stops, and we won’t pursue for just a traffic violation,” Snelling said. “Some of those are stolen cars..

. some are vehicles without license plates.”Westminster’s much broader policy for pursuits is constantly under review, Haubert said.

Looking back at the last five years, he thinks officers struck the right balance between pursuits and public safety.“I think the answer today is yes, but that is something that we will continuously evaluate,” he said. “.

..Is this what is best for our community and for their safety and to apprehend those that are violating our community? So, yes, today.

But that is under constant scrutiny by us each day.”Aurora’s new approach to pursuitsIn October, the Aurora Police Department opened up its pursuits policy, expanding it to allow officers to chase suspected drunken drivers and to remove a requirement that a felony cited to justify a chase must involve a threat or use of deadly force within the past 24 hours. The police department made no public announcements about the change at the time.

In March, the department changed the policy again to explicitly say officers could chase drivers in stolen vehicles. This time, the department publicized the change.Police in Aurora can now pursue any suspected felon if the officer believes that person poses “a serious risk to public safety if they are not immediately apprehended,” and can chase drivers suspected of “a crime involving a firearm that poses a serious threat of harm to the public.

”Chamberlain, the city’s new police chief, made the change even though 25% of the agency’s chases over the last five years resulted in injury or death — more than double the rate in Denver and more than three times that of Colorado Springs, The Post found.People were hurt in 31 of the agency’s 126 chases, according to data provided by police.Aurora Police Department investigations Cmdr.

Marc Paolino answers questions regarding a police pursuit that occurred earlier in the morning during a press briefing at the Aurora Municipal Center on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo by Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post)The Aurora Police Department took 19 reports of injuries to suspects, 12 reports of injuries to officers and four reports of bodily harm involving others during that time, according to data provided by the agency. One bystander, Oliver Jose Zeledon Gongora, 24, was killed last year when a fleeing carjacking suspect crashed into his parked vehicle.

“It’s a huge risk doing pursuits,” Chamberlain said. “There’s no getting around it. But there’s also that point of risk aversion, and if you’re so risk-averse to anything that you allow people to be victimized, to me, that’s the problem.

”Chamberlain said he weighed the rate of injuries and deaths resulting from pursuits before signing off on the policy changes and noted that most pursuits did not result in injuries. He hopes the threat of police chasing and arresting suspects — particularly intoxicated drivers and car thieves — will deter crime.“People know, ‘Hey, I can just steal cars, I can victimize people, I can do all kinds of stuff, and I can get away with it,’ ” he said of the department’s prior policy.

More than 27,000 suspected stolen vehicles and 8,400 drunken drivers have been reported to Aurora police since 2019, according to the department.In Fort Collins, which had the fewest chases among the departments reviewed by The Post, Chief Swoboda said he wants his officers’ actions to match how the broader justice system handles an alleged crime like a stolen vehicle.“They’re not getting large bonds, they’re not going to prison for this, so the suggestion that somehow police need to be the ones to say this person needs to be held accountable when the consequences aren’t that severe — we can’t care more than the public,” he said.

“...

Families will be forever changed, innocent people, police officers are getting hurt and killed, and for a charge that someone is going to get a $1,000 bond and maybe community corrections?”He’d rather see his officers recover a stolen vehicle when it is parked, or approach when the driver stops for gas, or follow a vehicle covertly until the driver gets out.“There’s a safer way to go about it,” Swoboda said.Click to enlargePolice departments have started to use alternatives to pursuits, like StarChase, a system that lets police shoot a GPS tracker onto a car and track it remotely, or the Grappler Police Bumper, which the Colorado State Patrol uses to stop cars by entangling them in webbing.

Denver police used StarChase 920 times between January 2019 and December 2024, a spokesman said. The agency pays $21,000 for 14 user licenses. The state patrol used a Grappler 163 times between August 2021 and March, with 98 successful deployments, Sgt.

Patrick Rice said.Snelling, with the Arvada Police Department, said officers found the StarChase system to be unreliable. The GPS tracker often would not stick to the suspect car, he said, or suspects would discover the device, stop and pull it off, he said.

Haubert said he expects technology will continue to improve and reduce the need for pursuits over the next decade.“That is another task that we have, and a duty that we have to our community, to make sure we are utilizing technology to minimize the risk to our community,” he said.The idea that pursuits have a deterrent effect isn’t backed by research, said Nix, the professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha.

“I don’t think there’s any good evidence that happens,” he said. “..

.In agencies that did move toward more restrictive policies, the sky did not fall.”Rather, Nix said research “has consistently shown that pursuits really don’t justify the risk.

”The Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit organization that issues guidance for police departments, recommends that pursuits only be authorized in the case of violent crimes that indicate the suspect poses an immediate danger to the public, independent from their driving behavior while fleeing from police.The practice of chasing drunk drivers is particularly controversial. Among the 18 agencies reviewed by The Post, only Aurora and the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office explicitly allow pursuits of suspected intoxicated drivers.

In Arapahoe County, such pursuits are allowed only if the driver stays under the posted speed limit.Swoboda said pursuing impaired drivers doesn’t make sense.“I’ve heard it said, ‘The only thing worse than a drunk driver is a drunk driver being chased by police,’ ” he said.

“Someone who is already impaired, there is increased risk of them being in a crash, and now they are going to be glued to the review mirror...

what is the expectation they are going to be able to safely drive that way?”Chamberlain argued officers have a responsibility to remove drunk and drug-impaired drivers from the road before they injure or kill someone.“I do think there’s got to be some point where you say enough is enough,” he said. “Where enough people have been injured, enough people have been hurt, enough people have been victimized, and again, if law enforcement doesn’t do that intervention, then who is going to do it?”Aurora’s officers are trained to pursue safely, the chief said.

Officer recruits receive 90 hours of driving training and 32 hours of training on vehicle stops, contacts and searches during the department’s academy program, which is roughly two times the amount of training required by the state, police spokesman Matthew Longshore said.The academy also features four “scenario days” that include simulated pursuits, and vehicle pursuits are among the topics of in-service trainings for officers after graduation.The independent monitor who is overseeing court-ordered reforms at the Aurora Police Department cautioned in an April report that the new pursuit policy will require officers to exercise sound judgment and restraint, and that the broader policy makes supervisor oversight “even more critical.

” The monitor recommended that all Aurora police cars be equipped with dashboard cameras so that pursuits can be documented in their entirety.“This isn’t anything that I took lightly,” Chamberlain said. “I really didn’t, and I mean that sincerely, from my heart.

I see a department that’s controlled. I see a department that understood the policy. I see a department that could weigh the risk as opposed to the value of getting somebody.

”Stolen vehicle pursuitsAmanda Hernandez-Torres said she made sure everyone knew the 2000 Chevrolet Cavalier was stolen before she let her three passengers get inside on Jan. 24, 2023.She sped away when Westminster officers tried to pull her over just before 1:30 a.

m. that night. The officers knew the car, worth about $1,400, was stolen and connected to an armed robbery that had happened in Denver a few days earlier.

Hernandez-Torres drove through an officer’s attempted Precision Immobilization Technique, an attempt by the officer to force the car to spin out and stop. And then she sped over stop sticks on Sheridan Boulevard and kept going.She briefly drove the wrong way on U.

S. 36, before crossing the center line and speeding at 92 mph onto the off-ramp for Church Ranch Boulevard. Inside the car, her passengers screamed at her to stop and let them out, according to a letter from First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King in which she declined to bring criminal charges against the Westminster officers.

Hernandez-Torres lost control, hit a ditch and the vehicle went airborne for 38 feet, crashing into a pole, then a retaining wall.“I remember..

. feeling the impact of something but I’m not sure what,” Hernandez-Torres said in a message from the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. “Everything was black until I watched the windshield get smaller and smaller each time the car flipped.

”Everyone in the car was seriously hurt — and one passenger, Nahtanha Ortiz, 42, was killed. Hernandez-Torres woke up three days later in a hospital; she’d broken her back in three places and fractured 10 ribs.She healed for four months, then she turned herself in to face vehicular homicide and related criminal charges (she was not charged with the Denver armed robbery).

She pleaded guilty in late 2023 and was sentenced to seven years in prison. The 27-year-old will be eligible for parole in 2026.“Her life was worth so much more than what my actions caused,” Hernandez-Torres said of Ortiz.

“If I would of had the slightest clue what would happen if I ran from the cops I would of stopped the second the cop got behind me. Nobody’s life is worth the careless(ness) and recklessness I showed that night. No amount of trouble you could get in for something so stupid as a stolen car is worth anyone’s life or well-being and safety.

”Most Front Range law enforcement agencies do not pursue stolen vehicles, but those that conduct such pursuits do them often, The Post found.Click to enlargeAmong 991 pursuits in which agencies provided a reason for the pursuit to The Post, stolen vehicles were the second-most common reason cited. The top reason for pursuits was a felony crime.

The majority of stolen vehicle chases were conducted by the Westminster Police Department and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, both of which allow such pursuits by policy. Westminster pursued at least 142 stolen vehicles over five years — 38% of all of the department’s cases — while Douglas County pursued 27 — 68% of its pursuits, the data shows.Nine different jurisdictions reported at least one chase for a stolen vehicle — even in some jurisdictions where policies prohibited such chases, The Post found.

In Loveland, six of the department’s 22 total chases were found to violate department policy, including one pursuit for a stolen vehicle, its data showed.In Denver, the only fatal pursuit in five years happened during an out-of-policy pursuit for a suspected stolen vehicle. The involved officers initially lied about engaging in the pursuit, an internal affairs investigation found.

Denver police officers Matthew Prell and Jonathan Hayes spotted a Kia Soul in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven at 7676 E. Colfax Ave. on Oct.

27, 2022. When officers pulled up, the driver took off.They followed, leaving the parking lot at 69 mph, according to data pulled from the patrol vehicle.

Over the next few minutes, the officers tailed the Kia driver through the neighborhood. Surveillance footage from Ashley Elementary School showed the Kia speeding past at about 75 mph, and the officers driving by at about 68 mph five seconds later, according to officer disciplinary records.The officers lost sight of the Kia, but kept searching for it while driving at high speeds.

The driver, Cassandra Livingston, 24, lost control of the car and crashed into a tree between Syracuse and Roslyn streets. She was killed.For the first year after Livingston’s death, her mother, Tillie McHone, believed what the police told her: that her daughter died in a single-vehicle crash into a tree.

When she found out officers actually pursued her daughter — through a news story about the officers’ discipline — it was a total shock, she said.Flowers and other decorations cover the trunk of a tree on Roslyn Street near where it intersects with Syracuse Street east of Fred Thomas Park in Denver on March 22, 2025. The tree marks the spot where Cassandra Livingston, Tillie McHone’s daughter, crashed her car and died during a Denver police pursuit in October 2022.

Standing next to the tree with her 21-year-old son Julian Sanchez, McHone explains, “We come here to visit on her birthday and Christmas.” (Photo By Kathryn Scott/Special to The Denver Post)Prell and Hayes served 40-day suspensions for the pursuit and concurrent 30-day suspensions for making misleading statements, police records show.“It was crazy, they traumatized us all over again,” she said.

Denver police Chief Ron Thomas said officers must constantly weigh the risk to public safety and the need for immediate apprehension when considering whether to start or continue a vehicle pursuit. The city’s policy allows for pursuits only if the suspect’s actions are so dangerous they present an imminent threat of serious injury or death, or if the suspect committed or threatened to commit a violent felony or a felony with a deadly weapon.Denver police don’t pursue for stolen vehicles or most property crimes, Thomas said.

“Certainly arguments can be made...

that quite often stolen cars, the reason they are stolen is so they can commit some subsequent crime and that crime may be a violent crime,” Thomas said. “..

.But I just think what they might do is different from what we know they are going to do and are doing. So if all we know is it is a stolen car, but we don’t know that they’re getting ready to go do a drive-by shooting or there is some other connection to a violent crime, if we don’t know that, I just don’t think it is consistent with our values to put the community at significant risk.

”McHone is now suing the police department. She’s angry and distrustful of law enforcement.“If a regular human being was acting that way, they would consider it vehicular homicide,” McHone said.

“An officer should take the same kind of heed for any kind of force that could be deadly.”She regularly visits the tree where Livingston died, its branches decorated with flowers, crosses, lights and a heart-shaped wreath. She remembers her daughter.

“When she was laughing, it was just infectious,” McHone said. “She just lit up the whole room.”A final goodbyeSavannah Pineda, 16, who was killed Dec.

29, 2021, in a crash during a Westminster police pursuit at West 92nd Avenue and Harlan Street. (Photo courtesy of Simone Pineda)The officers didn’t come to Simone Pineda’s door until around 4 a.m.

on Dec. 29, 2021, almost three hours after her twin crashed into the Westminster police car on West 92nd Avenue.She can still recite what they said: Savannah had been in a bad car accident; she was being life-flighted to Children’s Hospital Colorado.

They needed to get there as soon as they could.“I honestly just dropped,” Simone said. “Her name came out of their mouth and my knees hit the floor.

”They rushed to the hospital in Aurora. Simone cried and screamed and prayed on the ride over. But when they arrived, Savannah wasn’t there.

They waited and waited, and, finally, the twins’ mother got a call from a chaplain at Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge. He told them to come there instead.“My heart dropped,” Simone said.

“Because I knew she was gone.”At Lutheran, Simone found her twin in a hospital bed. She grabbed Savannah’s hand, and an alarm went off.

The doctors tried to get Savannah back after that, but they never did.“It was like she waited for me to leave,” Simone said, tears running down her cheeks.After the crash, Savannah’s boyfriend was arrested and charged as a juvenile with vehicular homicide and other charges.

He’s already out of juvenile detention, Simone said; she’s seen him a few times since the crash.Related ArticlesWoman killed, Westminster officer injured after stolen car crashes into police cruiser2 dead after crashing stolen vehicle into Westminster fire station during police chaseMother of woman killed after high-speed Denver police chase sues officersChild seriously injured in car crash after pursuit by Denver policeShe’s tried to forgive him but can’t. He’s still living a lifestyle rife with drugs and stolen cars, and he’s gotten into at least one more pursuit with police, she said.

“We got into a messed-up life,” Simone said. “A life we never should have lived. But we also knew what came with the life.

Being in those cars, we knew a high-speed chase was bound to come. When it gets to a high-speed chase, there is no stopping until you know it is safe.”But it’s different now.

At the end of 2023, Simone cut ties with her mother, moved back in with her grandmother, and systematically dismantled her connections to that old life. It was hard, and she’s proud that she did it.She went back to school and is on track to graduate with her high school diploma this year, at age 19.

She’s launching a hair braiding business, Braids by Mona, in large part because that was Savannah’s dream. She’s the one who taught Simone how to braid, and Simone is determined to make the business happen, for both of them.“It just breaks my heart, because, I wish I would have realized all this (expletive) sooner,” Simone said.

“And I would have got us out of that lifestyle. I feel like my sister would still be here if we would have got ourselves out of that.”She paused.

“We live, and we learn.”Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day..