Deputy Zackari Parrish murdered by law school grad in Colorado

According to CNN, Matthew Riehl, a University of Wyoming law school graduate, murdered Zackari Parrish, a Colorado deputy sheriff from inside Riehl’s barricaded bedroom in his apartment. The deputy was responding to a noise complaint for the second time Sunday;

The second call was dispatched as a domestic disturbance, and by 5:35 a.m. the four deputies had arrived at the scene.

The sheriff’s office said the roommate returned to the scene, gave deputies a key and said they could enter the residence. The roommate then left, police said.
Not long after the deputies found the suspect barricaded in his room, Riehl opened fire, Spurlock said.

“There were well over 100 rounds fired,” Spurlock said, adding that the deputies “all went down within almost seconds of each other, so it was more of an ambush type of attack on our officers.”

The wounded deputies crawled to safety as other law enforcement agencies responded to the shots fired call.

The suspect was killed about 90 minutes later during a shootout when a tactical team went into the apartment, the sheriff’s office said.

According to various news sources, Riehl was known to law enforcement although he had no arrests. Fox 31 says he’d had problems in 2008 with law enforcement;

In 2008, the then-law school student had his only run-in with campus police.

“He was a suspect in a harassment case,” University of Wyoming police chief Mike Samp said.

Samp said no charges were recommended at the time. Nearly 10 years later, Riehl again had the attention of university police after writing vulgar online messages about law school faculty and staff.

“There was enough alarm that we felt that we needed to notify our campus,” Samp said.

That notification, including a picture of Riehl and his car, urged anyone who might see him to call police. Officers also added patrols at the law school after the posts were published online.

“It was pretty apparent early on that there was very likely some mental health concerns with Matthew Riehl,” Samp said.

From Time;

Wyoming College of Law students had been warned about Riehl, a former student, because of social media posts critical of professors at the school in Laramie, reported KTWO-AM in Casper, Wyoming.

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. 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.

Oh, by the way, this is just incidental information, but Riehl was also a National Guardsman who deployed to Iraq with the 300th Field Artillery Regiment for a year in 2009. He was discharged honorably in 2012 as a Specialist (E-4) after nine years of service in the Reserves and the Wyoming National Guard.

Obviously, this incident has more to do with Riehl’s law school studies than with his military service during a deployment since his erratic behavior began before his deployment to Iraq and this year, eight years after his graduation, the law school faculty had to warn students about the danger of Riehl’s presence on campus.

Regardless, the media finds it necessary to headline their articles about the murderer with the fact that he was an Iraq War veteran, because, you know, that’s easier to understand for their low information headline reading consumers.

Less newsworthy: Thousands of Iraq War veterans celebrated the New Year without injuring anyone this last weekend.

Category: Crime