Colorado Police Say No Concrete Leads on Suspect in Poop Dump

Wheat Ridge, Colorado police say they're still looking for someone they say dumped blackwater down a storm drain at a local high school, contaminating a retention pond to the tune of a quarter million dollars. Local news outlets had carried a photo of a suspect in the case, a man who drove a truck camper, alleged to have done the dirty deed. Many of you commented on this story last week, and we checked back with the police to see if--well--anything new has surfaced.

First, if you did any checking on your own you may have noticed that at least one media outlet reported the size of the illegal dump at somewhere between 50 and 100 gallons of black water. The Wheat Ridge PD's public information officer, Lisa Stigall, said that was a quote taken out context. Originally the "100 gallon" statement came from a school official, who in context, was saying it didn't matter how large the spill was, 50 gallons, 100 gallons, it still required the expensive cleanup. Stigall says there was no way to determine just how many gallons were illegally dumped down the storm drain.

What makes the clean up so expensive is that in order to be considered safe, not only must the pond be pumped out, but 6" of soil below the area of contamination has to be removed, then the pond reconstructed. Crews were hampered by rains that fell during their work--each time that rain water had to be pumped out, and until the "clean" soil was reached, the rain water too, had to be treated as contaminated. At one point 100,000 gallons of pond water had been pumped out in the work.

We wondered if it was possible that a rogue sewage pumping firm had been responsible for the sewage dump--how did the police happen to "hit" upon a guy with a truck camper? Police were able to determine when the pond had last been inspected and found "clean," then compared that to the dates when complaints about a "manure" smell was reported. Using the date range, they asked the school's security camera support vendor to review their security tapes. Over the time period only one "suspicious vehicle" as Stigall calls it, was spotted.

The truck camper appeared on the tapes twice: Once he showed up, drove around the lot, then left. Some time later the same rig returned, this time hanging out for several minutes on the scene--apparently it was at that time that the shot of the driver which appeared in our last posting was taken. What hampers the police investigation is that the security tapes are proprietary and can't be run on the police department's equipment, and the police must rely on the security firm for prints for their investigation.

What about view's of the truck's license tag? Evidently the school recently planted new trees in the area, and every single angle showing the license plate on the vehicle is blocked. The police did receive one lead phone call, giving a California tag number--it proved to belong to an entirely different type of vehicle. One local resident has been utilizing Google Earth to scope out the area looking for a truck or camper matching the description of the suspect rig, but to this point, nothing in the form of any solid leads has turned up.

From where we stand, it would appear that if the truck camper shown in the security video is indeed the real dumper, then the sewer dump port on the camper must either be at the rear of the rig, or on the curb side. That would certainly narrow the field of possible camper makes significantly, a fact we pointed out to the police. Sadly, they have no photos that show a dump hose in use--unless it too, was obscured in the security pictures.

photo courtesy KUSA TV