The man accused of killing a 7-year-old Towaoc boy in December has been indicted by a federal grand jury. The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado announced Wednesday that 23-year-old Jeremiah Hight of Towaoc now faces one count of second-degree murder of a child in Indian Country, and one count of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. He is accused of firing a rifle into a mobile home on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation on December 11, killing the boy.
The group that claims it owns 1,460 acres of national-forest land near Mancos has filed a response to a lawsuit filed against its members by the U.S. government. In October the group, called the Free Land Holder Committee, put up barbed-wire fencing around the parcel. Local citizens then took down the fence. The Forest Service says the land has long been federally owned. The United States filed suit Nov. 26 in U.S. District Court of Colorado. On Jan. 7, a man acting as an “ambassador” for the group, Patrick Pipkin of Mancos, filed a lengthy response. The document, much of it handwritten, says no one has “provided valid evidence of title” to the parcel that would supersede the group’s claims. Citing numerous Biblical quotations, the response says the claim includes surface water rights, ditches, tributaries, fences, cattle-grazing, farming, and roads.
