Cases against two Cortez residents charged with beating one man to death and assaulting two other men in Veterans Park last year are moving toward trial. Following a preliminary hearing Friday, 33-year-old Robert Salt, Jr., was bound over for trial on seven counts ranging from first-degree murder to second-degree assault. Twenty-year-old Nykhona Holiday waived her right to a preliminary hearing. Cortez Police Officer Jerry Sam testified that on the night of Aug. 20, 2025, he was called to the park and found a man, Bilbert Tsosie, lying unconscious with a bloody face near the outdoor pool. When other officers arrived, they found two more unconscious victims, Curtis Benally and Anthony Hill. Benally was later pronounced dead. Hill and Tsosie, who had also been beaten, survived. Sam testified that Holiday came to the crime scene, saying she was looking for her cell phone, and he saw blood on her shoes. Police Detective Charles Osborn, who then talked to her, testified that when he told her about the beatings she named Salt as a suspect. He was found nearby, intoxicated. Osborn said Holiday later told him Salt stomped on Benally multiple times. Osborn also said a witness to the assaults told Osborn that Holiday and Salt told him, “This is what we do.”
Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.