A Colorado man was cited after greater than 200 newspapers have been stolen from distribution packing containers, stopping folks from shopping for The Ouray County Plaindealer the day it revealed a front-page story about an investigation into sexual assault on the residence of the Ouray metropolis police chief.

The Plaindealer mentioned in a note to readers on Thursday that the entire newspaper’s packing containers within the metropolis of Ouray and all however one within the city of Ridgway had been emptied after the weekly newspaper’s newest version had been distributed.

“Whoever did this doesn’t perceive that stealing newspapers doesn’t cease a narrative,” the word mentioned.

The Plaindealer has been working since 1877 and studies on information in mountainous Ouray County, which is about 165 miles southwest of Colorado Springs, and has simply over 5,000 residents.

The newspaper, which sells for $1, said on Thursday that somebody had taken all of the newspapers from inside a dozen distribution packing containers.

“From what we all know thus far, it appears this particular person put in 4 quarters and took all of the papers at these racks,” the newspaper mentioned. “It’s fairly clear that somebody didn’t need the group to learn the information this week.”

The stolen version featured a front-page story concerning the arrests of three folks after a 17-year-old lady mentioned she was raped a minimum of 3 times by two completely different folks on the residence of the Ouray police chief in Might 2023.

The police chief and others have been on the residence and asleep in the course of the assaults, the newspaper reported. The chief, Jeff Wooden, didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Sunday.

The three folks arrested have been 17, 18 and 19 on the time of the assaults, and one in every of them is the police chief’s stepson, The Plaindealer reported.

The article didn’t title the accuser, who’s now 18, but it surely included her description of what occurred that night time, based mostly on info in an arrest affidavit.

The Ouray County Sheriff’s Workplace said in a statement on Friday that the suspect within the newspaper theft was “not a member or relative of native regulation enforcement and never related to the defendants within the latest reported sexual assault.”

The reported sexual assaults are being investigated by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation “to take away any notion of bias, and to be above reproach,” the sheriff’s workplace mentioned.

Town of Ouray mentioned in a statement on Thursday that its police division had “not been concerned with the investigation” of the sexual assaults and that no personnel investigations have been being performed on the division.

The sheriff’s workplace didn’t title the newspaper theft suspect in its assertion, however The Plaindealer mentioned the workplace had cited Paul Choate, 41, on suspicion of petty theft.

Mr. Choate, a neighborhood restaurant proprietor, returned the stolen newspapers to The Plaindealer workplace on Thursday night time with an apology, the newspaper mentioned.

He admitted that he had stolen the newspapers due to the front-page story, The Plaindealer reported. Mr. Choate couldn’t be reached for touch upon Sunday.

“The Plaindealer is just not disclosing Choate’s relationship to the sexual assault case,” the newspaper mentioned. “The theft was not linked in any strategy to the three defendants within the case, their households or the Ouray Police Division.”

The Plaindealer mentioned it had reprinted 250 copies of the version earlier than Mr. Choate returned the newspapers.

After The Plaindealer introduced the theft, it mentioned, it obtained greater than $2,000 in donations.