A Colorado man with an AR-style rifle, a handgun, body armor and a helmet and fake explosives in his vehicle was found dead of an apparent suicide at an amusement park early Saturday, officials said.
“There’s much more we do not know right now than we do know,” Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario said at a news conference Monday.
Maintenance staff found 20-year-old was found dead in the women’s restroom at the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park in the early morning hours of Saturday, before the amusement park opened for the day, Vallario said.
The man, whose identity was not released, was wearing what was described as black tactical clothing “bearing patches and emblems that gave the appearance of being associated with law enforcement,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Investigators don’t know what the man intended, or a motive and Vallario said that there was no kind of history or apparent reason for concern expressed by family or friends.
He had an AR-style rifle with several magazines, a semi-automatic handgun with several magazines, was wearing body armor and a ballistic helmet, and investigators discovered “both real and fake explosives,” Vallario said.
Written on a wall in the restroom where the man’s body was found were the words “I am not a killer,” and “I just wanted to get into the caves,” Vallario said, although he told reporters that he had seen only photographs.
Investigators don’t know for certain that the person found dead wrote the message. There was other text but the sheriff could not tell what it was.
The man most likely would not have been able to legally buy the guns because of his age, Vallario said. There are restrictions, and Colorado earlier this year passed a law raising the age of gun purchases to 21.
The guns found appeared to be what are called “ghost guns,” which are unserialized firearms that can be made at home from kits, he said.
Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park is an amusement park in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, a city of around 10,000 in the Rocky Mountains 20 miles west of Denver.
It had thrill rides and caverns. The caves extend to more than 16,000 known feet, according to the park’s website.
The man who was found dead is from the Carbondale area, Vallario said. He entered the park illegally before his body was found, Vallario said. The man apparently shot himself, but an autopsy was scheduled, he said.
Despite the patches on his clothing that bore a resemblance to those of law enforcement, Vallario said as far as he knows he was not law enforcement.
Near where the body was, investigators found fake hand grenades and a pipe bomb, Vallario said, and in his car there was a fake improvised explosive device as well as another package that was explosive.
The handgun was found next to the body and the rifle was found on a counter in restroom, Vallario said.
Visitors take a lift to the adventure park, but there is a service road to it and it is believed the man drove to the park to enter after hours, Vallario said.
“This very sad and tragic incident reminds us how much our Glenwood Springs community means to us,” Nancy Heard, general manager of the park, said in a statement. She thanked all the law enforcement agencies that responded.
The FBI is assisting the sheriff’s office and investigators will be going through the man’s cell phone and social media and conducting interviews to learn more about him and what he intended, Vallario said.
“We had the potential for something very heinous and gruesome to happen in this community,” he said. “We were fortunate that it did not occur.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
