Suspect and lawman dead in gun battle sparked when sheriff's officers tried to serve eviction notice
A political activist accused of firing a rifle at three Colorado sheriff’s deputies as they arrived Wednesday morning to serve an eviction notice at his Bailey home is dead, along with one of the lawmen, authorities said.
Martin Wirth, 58, also shot the two other deputies in the gunfight, inflicting life-threatening injuries on one, a Colorado Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman told the Denver Channel.
Wirth, who ran unsuccessfully for state senate as a Green Party candidate in 2014, had been battling the foreclosure of his home for years in court.
He is mentioned on a Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition website, which in a letter written to the county sheriff said members of its group and Occupy Denver would be headed to Wirth’s home in 2014. The letter said the planned event was “a NON-VIOLENT FORECLOSURE RESISTANCE ACTION to support Mr. Wirth and our constitutional rights,” another Denver Channel story reports.
Spokeswoman Susan Medina of the CBI told the station that deputies had anticipated possible trouble and hence the CBI and a bomb squad were called to the scene of the shooting as a precaution.
The Associated Press, the Denver Post and Fox 31 Denver also have stories.
