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CCSD to host community meeting on new elementary school plans Town hall will be Aug. 22 at Carlson Elementary BY DEB HURLEY BROBST DBROBST@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

repeated responses” by ISPD prior to the incident. Patterson’s prior contacts with them, the report said, “demonstrated traits associated with psychiatric issues, including auditory hallucinations and acute paranoia.” But, the report highlights, not only were no referrals to any mental health resources given, the county has “no identifiable mental health or counseling resources within the County which might enable for law enforcement to direct citizens to.”

The community is invited to learn about conceptual plans for the Clear Creek School District’s new elementary school at a town hall meeting from 6-7:30 p.m. Aug. 22 at Carlson Elementary School. The meeting will provide the community with plans for the school in the former middle school on Highway 103, plus other possible tenants there, being called partners. The Clear Creek school board heard a presentation at a study session on Aug. 11 about how the new elementary school likely will fit into the building and what impact partners would have on the design. According to Mike Riggs with RTA Architects, the elementary school would take up most of the first, second and third floors. However, if the school board decides to allow either an early child care center or Clear Creek Community for Art and Education, or both, into the unused space, that would change some of the parameters for the elementary

SEE MENTAL HEALTH, P6

SEE CCSD, P15

In the midst of a pandemic that has caused a public health crisis the world over, a mental health crisis has worsened in parallel naSHUTTERSTOCK IMAGE tionally and across Colorado — and Clear Creek county has been no exception.

Increased calls, lack of resources and unanswered cries for help. Inside Clear Creek’s mental health crisis. BY ANDREW FRAIELI AFRAIELI@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Darrin Patterson was shot by Clear Creek Sheriff’s deputies on May 9, 2020. He drove erratically, led officers on a car chase and eventually pulled out a handgun and pointed it at a deputy before being shot at 30 times — six of the shots landed, killing him. This was not Patterson’s first interaction with law enforcement. He had called 911 multiple times before, expressing paranoid thoughts and delusions to the point that now Sgt.

Richard Sonnenberg of the Idaho Springs Police Department threatened to “lock him up in the nut house” if Patterson kept calling, according to a grand jury report that was completed after the shooting, describing the incident and expressing multiple concerns over it. The report mentions ISPD’s “failure to take any affirmative steps to facilitate assistance to Darrin Patterson, a person obviously experiencing profound mental illness, which contributed to this unfortunate series of events” and continues that the jury was “troubled by the

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