Westminster Police

The Police Department will hold an open house Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will include station tours, canine demonstrations and presentations of SWAT team and crime prevention drills. Children may play in the displays, which will include a black and white police car, a motorcycle and a U.S. Marine Corps search and rescue helicopter. The department will also offer fingerprinting and balloons for children.

GOLDEN, Colo. - A Colorado teenager has confessed to authorities in the abduction and killing of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway, prosecutors said Thursday as suspect Austin Reed Sigg made his first court appearance in the case that galvanized a suburban Denver community. Wearing green jail pants and a separate top, Sigg, 17, seemed alert. He said little as he appeared before District Judge Ann Gail Meinster in what was technically a juvenile proceeding. The judge decided to hold Sigg without bail, pending an appearance Tuesday where he will be charged as an adult.

A man who was apparently so angry over traffic citations that he decided to kill the first Westminster police officer he saw has been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder after he tried to buy a gun from an undercover detective, police said Friday. "We found several citations in his vehicle," Sgt. Tom Blackburn, a spokesman for the Westminster Police Department, said regarding the Thursday night arrest of Khai Pham, 29, of Riverside. "He was pretty upset."

WESTMINSTER, Colo. - Across Denver's northwestern suburbs, where the foothills loom and one small town melts into the next, danger has pulled up a chair. "Everybody is scared. You can just feel it," said Destiny Gonzalez as she dropped off her 9-year-old daughter at Westminster Elementary School. Instead of driving away, she lingered, watching to make sure her little girl safely made the few steps to the door. "The kids who I used to see walking by themselves now have a parent with them," said Casey McCabe, giving her 10-year-old son a quick goodbye hug. She too stayed outside the school until he stepped inside.

A Westminster woman was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon in connection with knife attacks on a man and woman early Friday morning, police said. Teresa Ruth Powell, 25, was being held in Orange County Jail, where her bail had not been set, according to Larry Woessner, a police spokesman. Powell allegedly stabbed Kathleen Dee Nichols, 25, of Garden Grove, following an argument at about 4:15 a.m. outside her home, police said.

Police shot and killed a suspected drug dealer after he ran from officers and then appeared to reach for a gun in his waistband, authorities said Sunday. Police subsequently determined that Michael Scott Coolidge, 35, of Huntington Beach was unarmed, Westminster police said. "He crouched, turned and squatted," Lt. Mike Schliskey said. "He was stooped down with his hand in his waistband. The officer obviously thought he had a gun or he wouldn't have fired."

The FBI and Westminster police are jointly investigating extortion threats that have apparently been made against merchants and individuals in Orange County's Little Saigon business district, Police Chief James I. Cook said Thursday. While an FBI spokesman refused to comment, federal sources said the investigation began two weeks ago and demonstrates the agency's widening interest in pursuing crime in Vietnamese exile communities.

The Police Department has received a $300,000 state grant to knit together a network of community programs aimed at reducing delinquency--including training neighborhood activists and setting up a cross-cultural center that enlists seniors for child care. Westminster Police Chief James Cook said the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning notified him Friday that the department will receive the 18-month grant, dubbed "Operation Revitalization."

The hand-printed signs lining the streets of the Westminster barrio where 18-year-old Frank Martinez died carry an angry message of frustration and distrust. It has been more than a month since a Westminster police officer shot Martinez in his own back yard during an attempted arrest, but the memory is still vivid in the minds of his friends and neighbors. Norma de Leon, 31, is a lifelong resident of the area.

Police have asked residents to help them find a prankster who has been calling people and identifying himself as a Westminster police detective. According to about a dozen residents who complained to police, someone telephoned them Monday and Tuesday and told them that they had outstanding parking tickets, Police Officer Robert Amren said.

Police in Colorado are reviewing details of an attempted abduction from last May in hopes of finding clues to the death of Jessica Ridgeway, a 10-year-old girl whose dismembered body was found this month. Ridgeway was last seen on Oct. 5 while walking to school in Westminster, Colo., a suburb of Denver. Volunteers searched the area for days until her remains were found about 10 miles away in a field at Pattridge Park Open Space in Arvada. Now authorities are looking back at an attempted abduction of a jogger in May and asking the public if it remembers anything about that event on the Ketner Lake Open Space.

A 51-year-old former karate teacher who was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of molesting six boys in his martial arts studio remained in custody Monday, the Orange County district attorney's office said. Patrick Shawn Magnan, of Westminster, was charged with 11 felony counts of performing lewd acts on a child under 14, which could bring him life in prison if he is convicted. Authorities said the molestations took place at the karate studio on Magnolia Avenue that Magnan owned from 1999 until November 2005.

A Westminster woman in her 30s and a baby girl were found dead Thursday, apparently killed in their Little Saigon apartment, police said. The victims' names were not released pending notification of relatives. They appeared to have been dead for several days, authorities said. The bodies were found about 12:30 p.m.

Police are seeking a motorist who hit and killed a man in front of a park early Sunday morning. The dead man, whose identity was being withheld pending notification of relatives, was found at 6:10 a.m. in the 14800 block of Beach Boulevard. He appears to have been struck by a vehicle traveling very fast around 4:30 a.m., police said. Anyone with information is asked to call Westminster police at (714) 898-3315, Ext. 332.

A 63-year-old Signal Hill building designer has been charged with bribery for allegedly giving a Westminster city planner an envelope stuffed with cash to expedite the approval of a shopping center expansion, police said. Trung Hieu Vo was arrested Wednesday and faces a felony count of bribing a public official with an amount exceeding $400, Westminster police spokesman Lt. Bill Lewis said. The exact amount was not disclosed.

A 20-hour standoff ended Thursday when Westminster police shot to death a man they said had threatened family members and fired at officers with a shotgun. Javier Escamilla, 29, died about 5:45 p.m. at his family's home in the 6800 block of Wee Way. "We'd been trying and trying and trying to get him to peaceably give up and talk to us," said Lt. Al Panella of the Westminster Police Department. "We'd been trying to initiate a dialogue, but he just refused to talk." The incident began about 9 p.m.

Westminster police shot and killed a man Saturday who they say had shot a family member and assaulted another before aiming the weapon at officers. Daniel Ashworth, 37, died about 11:40 a.m. after police responded to a 911 call from a home in the 6800 block of Homer Street. When officers arrived, Ashworth was holding a handgun, according to a department news release. He refused to put it down and aimed it at officers, the release said. Several officers fired, fatally wounding Ashworth.

The family of a man shot and fatally pinned to a palm tree by a Westminster police cruiser in February filed a $40-million claim against the city and Orange County as outrage over the incident continued to simmer in Little Saigon. The death of Hoang Tan Bui, a 30-year-old father of two, has infuriated some in the Vietnamese American community who say they have had a cultural mistrust of law enforcement dating back to their experiences in Vietnam during the war.