Denver TV Station Security Guard Charged with Murder

  • Oct 19, 2020

A television station security guard accused of fatally shooting a pro-police demonstrator following opposing rallies was charged Monday with second-degree murder, according to the Denver district court clerk’s office.

The charges in the death of Lee Keltner, 49, were filed to the district court against Matthew Dolloff, 30, who was protecting a KUSA-TV producer at the time of the incident.

The next hearing is set for Wednesday morning, according to the district court clerk’s office. No attorney has been listed for Dolloff yet in court records. People convicted of second-degree murder face a mandatory sentence of between 16 and 48 years in prison.

William Boyle, a lawyer for Keltner’s widow, said Friday that he thinks the evidence available supports a second-degree murder charge. Under Colorado law, second-degree murder is defined as knowingly killing someone but without the deliberation prosecutors are required to prove in first-degree murder cases.

Boyle said he has reached out to KUSA-TV, Pinkerton and Isborn Security, the security company that said it hired Dolloff for the work as a contractor to Pinkerton, seeking more information about their actions. He said he did not immediately hear back from them and that a lawsuit against any entity involved in allowing Dolloff to work without a license was a possibility in order to “open a conversation.”

“We are just trying to find out exactly what happened, why it happened and who is responsible for creating the situation that resulted in Mr. Keltner’s death,” he said.

Police say Keltner was in a verbal dispute with a 27-year-old man as the rallies broke up Saturday when Dolloff and a 25-year-old person got into an altercation with Keltner. Keltner slapped Dolloff in the head and Dolloff pulled out a semiautomatic handgun and shot Keltner as Keltner discharged pepper spray at him, police said in an arrest affidavit.

A cellphone video taken by KUSA’s producer suggests that Keltner was upset that his dispute with the first man was being recorded by cameras. It shows Keltner in a confrontation with a man wearing a T-shirt that read, “Black Guns Matter.” A bystander is trying to defuse the argument, which occurred after a “Patriot Muster” demonstration and “BLM-Antifa Soup Drive” counterprotest downtown.

Source: Associated Press

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