 A member of the Boulder County Bomb Squad surveys the scene after a shooting suspect died in a gun battle with a Boulder County sheriff’s deputy on the Peak to Peak Hwy. in Nederland, Colo., on Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008, following a shooting in which one person was killed at Eldora Mountain Resort near Nederland, according to the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office. (AP Photo) |
By Heath Urie
Daily Camera
BOULDER, Colo. — What should have been a booming day at the height of Eldora Mountain Resort’s ski season turned tragic Tuesday when an employee clad in black and armed with a semi-automatic handgun arrived at a morning staff meeting and opened fire on his supervisor.
Eldora General Manager Brian Mahon died after being twice shot by the gunman, who himself was killed following a vicious fire fight with a sheriff’s deputy along a secluded stretch of mountain highway south of Nederland.
The incident began at 7:26 a.m. when a young man walked into a building known at the Eldora pump house -- where about 20 employees were getting ready for the day in a locker room area -- and fired a shot into the ceiling, sheriff’s Cmdr. Phil West said.
The suspect, identified by the Boulder County Coroner’s Office as 24-year-old Derik A. Bonestroo, of Nederland, yelled something about religion to the employees and then fatally shot Mahon, Sheriff Joe Pelle said.
According to witnesses, the shooter asked Mahon which religion he believed in. When Mahon answered that he was a Catholic, the shooter fired at him twice, several witnesses said.
“There are various interpretations about what was said,” West said. “Witnesses told us (Bonestroo) had been through some emotional crisis.”
Mahon, 49, had been an Eldora manager since 1991 and leaves behind a wife and two children.
Rob Linde, marketing director for Eldora, said Tuesday afternoon that Mahon was a victim of circumstance and the shooting was “random.”
“Brian was at the location at the time and walked through the door after he heard the shots fired,” Linde said. “The Eldora employee turned the gun on Brian and shot him, and left the scene.”
Linde said the morning meeting was a regular part of the Lift Operations Department. He said Bonestroo was employed at the resort only since the start of this ski season.
“We don’t know a lot about him,” Linde said.
After shooting Mahon, witnesses said the suspect left the pump house in a sedan.
Sheriff’s Deputy John Seifert was on patrol in the Nederland area when people at the pump house started calling 911, officials said.
Seifert was on his way to the ski resort when the suspect passed by him along County Road 130 near Nederland Middle-High School at 7:33 a.m.
The deputy gave chase, officials said, until the suspect stopped about a mile south of Nederland along the Peak-to-Peak Highway three minutes later.
“The suspect immediately leaned out of his driver’s side window and began firing shots at the deputy,” West said.
The 46-year-old deputy grabbed his AR-15 rifle and ran to the back of his patrol SUV, West said.
“There were several shots fired” in what West described as a “gun battle.”
Bullets struck the patrol car’s tires, windshield and radiator, but did not strike the deputy. However, a shard of glass that flew from either a broken spot light or the SUV’s windshield hit Seifert in the eye.
Seifert, a four-year veteran officer, member of the Boulder County SWAT team and a firearms instructor for the Sheriff’s Office, returned fire and hit the man at least once, West said. Bonestroo died at the scene.
Seifert was treated and released from Boulder Community Hospital, authorities said.
Bonestroo gave “every indication that he wasn’t done shooting,” West said, and the deputy likely had no choice but to return fire.
The multi-agency Boulder County Investigation Team will probe the gun battle while Seifert is placed on paid administrative leave -- a standard procedure after an officer-involved shooting, West said.
Lisa Keeter, the deputy’s girlfriend, was at the cordoned-off entrance to Eldora early Tuesday, waiting to hear about her boyfriend. She said she was worried about Seifert, but knows he’s “very handy with a gun” and was prepared to defend himself.
Shortly after the fire fight, Nederland police Officer Larry Johns and several sheriff’s deputies arrived and helped secure the scene, officials said.
The Boulder County Bomb Squad was then called to help search the suspect’s car, after backpacks and other items inside were deemed suspicious. No devices were found and the car was towed to the Boulder County Justice Center to be searched for evidence.
Cynthia Davis, 35, met the suspected gunman at her front door less than an hour before the shooting started at the resort.
Davis, an advertising representative who had worked with the slain Eldora manager several times before, said Bonestroo banged on her door about 6:50 a.m.
The tall, slender man was dressed in all black and had what appeared to be a gun strapped in a holster on his right thigh, she said.
“I kept telling myself it had to be a walkie-talkie or something because it didn’t make sense why he would have a weapon,” Davis said.
She said the man appeared “very agitated” and demanded to know where her neighbors were.
The neighbors, she said, had worked at the ski resort but recently quit and moved from the neighborhood.
“I don’t know why he’d want to be looking for my neighbors,” Davis said.
She did not call the police, she said, because she thought the man was a police officer at first. When she told the man her neighbors had left, he turned around and got in a car.
Davis said she was in shock after hearing about the shootings less than an hour later.
“We have an amazing community up here and things like this don’t happen up here very often,” she said.
Sheriff’s detectives spent most of Tuesday afternoon at the Nederland Community Center interviewing about 20 people
who were inside the pump house building during the shooting.
One by one, the witnesses left their interviews mostly in tears or visibly shaken.
Matthew Koehorst, a 21-year-old Eldora employee, said the manager who died was “just unlucky -- a complete fluke.”
“It could’ve been me next,” he said. “I was next in line. ... That was the most terrifying experience of my life; I’m not gonna go through that again.”
Koehorst said he saw a gunman enter the room that morning who “we thought was a friend.”
“Now we know that he wasn’t.”
Peter Rousseau, a skier from North Boulder who arrived at the Eldora Mountain Resort around 7:15 a.m., said he saw ski patrol medics respond to the pump house with IV bags. Resort officials then closed the lodge and ordered employees and early-arriving skiers and snowboarders to gather in the resort’s bar.
“There were people crying in the bar,” Rousseau said. “One guy collapsed in tears.”
Eldora officials closed the mountain to skiers Tuesday, but will re-open today at 8:30 a.m.
A message on Eldora’s Web site said: “Having spent the day in shock, the employees of Eldora have decided the best thing to do to memorialize Brian is to open the ski area tomorrow with the slopes groomed ‘Brian’ perfect.”
Copyright 2008 Daily Camera