DENVER: Videos made by the man who shot and killed a Colorado sheriff’s deputy after concerns were raised about his mental health show the gunman calling 911 and then opening his apartment door and talking to responding officers before the shooting.
The footage , livestreamed on Periscope, was obtained by Denver’s KUSA-TV. The station broadcast clips from two videos in which Matthew Riehl says he would not hurt anyone except to defend himself before calling authorities.
“Maybe I bought over 1,000 rounds of ammunition from Walmart. It’s not illegal,” he says.
Later, he tells a police dispatcher that a man had invited him to his house and was acting strangely.
When authorities arrive at Riehl’s suburban Denver apartment, the footage shows him talking to at least two officers, telling them he wants to file an emergency restraining order against his domestic partner. He is upset when one officer offers to give him a phone number to call, and leaves the doorway to go back into a room.
“Did you not get the message? Wow. They didn’t get the message. They lied,” he is heard saying on the video.
At another point, Riehl is seen holding a glass in his hand and says he’s had two scotches. He is heard saying that drinking would help him defend himself if someone bothers him.
The TV station said Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock verified the authenticity of the videos and said the 911 call made by Riehl was the second one from his apartment in Highlands Ranch, 16 miles (about 25 kilometers) south of Denver, on Sunday.
The first 911 call was made by Riehl’s roommate, who told authorities Riehl was acting strangely and might be having a mental breakdown. Responding deputies to that call found no evidence of a crime and left.
The footage shows the shooting but the station did not air that footage. A clip purporting to show it has been posted elsewhere online.
Riehl, an attorney and an Iraq war veteran, previously posted videos criticizing Colorado law enforcement officers in profane, highly personal terms.
Wyoming College of Law students had been warned about Riehl, a former student, because of his social media posts critical of professors at the school in Laramie.
A Nov. 6 email from Assistant College of Law Dean Lindsay Hoyt told students to notify campus police if they spotted Riehl or his car near campus, KTWO-AM in Casper, Wyoming, reported. In addition, security on campus was increased for several days.
Campus officers called police in Lone Tree, Colorado, in mid-November to warn them about Riehl, suggesting his rants were indicative of mental illness, UW Police Chief Mike Samp told The Denver Post.
Samp said it’s possible that Colorado authorities faced the same issue as Wyoming officials when an apparently mentally ill, dangerous person makes indirect threats.
The deputy’s slaying was the most recent in a string of fatal shootings involving suspects who may have had mental health problems, and the state has expanded services in hopes of finding a solution.
Colorado opened 12 walk-in mental health crisis centers across the state and set up a 24-hour hotline after a gunman killed 12 people in a suburban Denver movie theater in 2012. Doctors testified the gunman, James Holmes, was mentally ill.
The Colorado Office of Behavioral Health has said more than 580,000 people have taken advantage of the expanded services, going to a crisis center or calling or texting the hotline or a separate help line for less urgent cases.
Riehl was licensed as a lawyer for five years in Wyoming and voluntarily gave up his license in 2016, said Wyoming Bar Association executive director Sharon Wilkinson.
He practiced at a law firm in the small city of Rawlins and later opened his own practice but withdrew from the bar in October 2016, making him ineligible to practice law in the state, Wilkinson said. That’s the same year records indicate he moved back to Colorado.
Wilkinson says the bar received no complaints about Riehl.
Authorities have said he fired more than 100 rounds before he was killed by a SWAT team.
Riehl, armed with a rifle, wounded four deputies, including Zackari Parrish in the initial gunfire. The other three deputies managed to get away but had to leave Parrish behind because of their injuries and the ongoing gunfire. Parrish later was declared dead.
About 1.5 hours later, the SWAT team arrived and exchanged fire with Riehl. He was killed and a fifth officer was wounded.
Two people in nearby apartment units were also wounded sometime during the prolonged standoff.
Man who killed Colorado deputy livestreamed himself
Man who killed Colorado deputy livestreamed himself
To infinity and beyond: Grendizer’s 50 years of inspiring Arabs
- 50 years after its creation, the Grendizer anime series continues to capture Arab imagination
- Arab News Japan speaks to creator Go Nagai, Middle Eastern fans and retells the story behind the UFO Robot tasked with protecting our planet
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
