Denver rally shooting suspect Matthew Dolloff did ‘everything he was trained to do’ in deadly clash with Navy vet
DENVER rally shooting suspect Matthew Dolloff did "everything he was train to do" in the deadly clash with a Navy veteran, according to his lawyer.
Dolloff, 30, is being held on suspicion of first-degree murder following near Civic Center Park.
Authorities have not identified the man who was killed, but a man told The Denver Post it was his father, , a 49-year-old veteran who operated a hat-making business in the area.
Dolloff was reportedly working for security company Pinkerton and contracted by 9News to protect their TV crew.
The Denver City Attorney's Office told CBS4 on Monday: "Licensed security guard employers that hire unlicensed security guards could face disciplinary actions against their licenses ranging from a fine, to suspension, to revocation.
"He was doing what he was supposed to be doing there," Richards said.
Two guns and a Mace can were found at the crime scene but no further details, including who the guns belonged to, were released because officials do not want to harm the ongoing investigation, department spokesperson Jay Casillas said.
Who is Denver shooting suspect Matthew Dolloff?
Dolloff did have a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Colorado issued by his local sheriff’s office but it was suspended Monday because of the allegations against him.
Elbert County Sheriff Tim Norton said he will decide whether Dolloff will get the five-year permit back based on what happens in the criminal case.
According to state business records, Dolloff was listed as the registered agent for a farm that raises animals including turkeys, sheep and goats in Elizabeth, a town outside the Denver metro area.
No one answered the phone at the farm on Monday and a message left for another person listed in business filings was not returned.
KUSA-TV said Sunday that it has been hiring private security to accompany its staff at protests for a number of months.
It said Dolloff had been hired through the Pinkerton security company.
However, in a statement, Pinkerton said Dolloff was a contract agent, not a Pinkerton employee. The company did not reveal the name of the contract company Dolloff worked for.
"Pinkerton is fully cooperating with law enforcement authorities in their investigation of this matter," it said.
Network news crews have taken security for years, especially overseas, said Dan Shelley, executive director of the Radio-Television-Digital News Association.
In recent years, it’s become more common for television news crews amid increasingly corrosive political and ideological rhetoric, he said.
"It's very unfortunate because journalists, while they’re not around to make friends, they are around to serve their communities by seeking and reporting the truth," he said.
In some markets, like the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s become fairly routine, said Al Tompkins with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
A private security guard there was shot and wounded when a crew on assignment was robbed of their camera outside a library in February 2019.
Typically, security guards are unobtrusive and step in simply to defuse situations, he said.
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"The fact of the matter is, the intensity of doing the job of journalism keeps you from being as aware as you need to be in order to stay safe," Tompkins said.
"They're going in there with one main goal, and that is to avoid problems."