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Fourth sex assault case filed against Woody Creek teen

Jason Auslander
The Aspen Times

The District Attorney’s Office filed another case of sexual assault Wednesday against a 17-year-old Woody Creek resident already charged with assaulting two local teenage girls and a 5-year-old, according to court records.

The latest assault case came to the attention of law enforcement investigators after the alleged victim in one of the other cases the 17-year-old is charged with reported hearing about it, according to an affidavit filed Wednesday in Pitkin County District Court.

Investigators then interviewed the latest alleged victim, who told them she initially did not want to report what happened, but a friend encouraged her to come forward after hearing what allegedly happened to the two other girls he’s charged with assaulting. She said “she wanted to help … get justice for other girls (the 17-year-old) may have assaulted,” the affidavit states.



That fourth case against the teen allegedly stems from a Labor Day Weekend party at a home in Garfield County, though the case was filed in Pitkin County, the affidavit states. The teenage girl told investigators she only had “a little bit of wine” at the party before she “got really tired and her friend … walked her to the guest room to put her to bed,” according to the document.

Her friend checked on her several times, but at one point the 17-year-old entered the room “and crawled into the bed near her, which scared her,” the affidavit states. The 17-year-old then reached inside her pants and touched her while asking several times if she wanted to have sex.



The girl told him no several times, then “crawled away from him and he left,” according to the affidavit. The girl waited a few minutes, told her friends what happened and they left the party.

The girl said she saw the 17-year-old’s face and heard his voice, though she had never really spoken to him before, the document states. She told investigators “he would smile at her at school but she tried to stay away from him,” according to the affidavit.

A friend of the alleged victim who was at the party and spoke to a Garfield County sheriff’s investigator said the girl came out of the bedroom “freaking out” and “tearing up” and said the 17-year-old touched her, the affidavit states.

Other guests at the party reported that the 17-year-old was very intoxicated, while a video from his phone showed two other men carrying him unconscious out of the home to a car, according to the document.

He is charged with sexual assault while the victim was physically helpless and had not consented to sexual contact, according to charging documents filed Wednesday.

The 17-year-old is also charged with allegedly raping and choking two high school girls this summer. He has been charged as an adult in all three cases, though his lawyer has asked the District Court judge in the case to transfer at least the first case back to juvenile court. The Aspen Times is not identifying him pending the judge’s juvenile court decision, which is expected in January.

The 17-year-old is charged as a juvenile in the case involving the sexual assault of the 5-year-old, which allegedly occurred two years ago.

Keegan Callahan, 20, of Woody Creek is also charged with raping and choking the first victim with the 17-year-old. Callahan is charged with raping the second victim as well, though that allegedly occurred on a different date than the assault attributed to the 17-year-old.

Callahan is being held at the Pitkin County Jail in lieu of a $100,000 cash-only bond, while the 17-year-old is being held on a similar bond at a juvenile detention facility in Grand Junction.

jauslander@aspentimes.com


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