CLEAR CREEK COUNTY, Colo. —
Sally Glass, her voice soft and breaking as she spoke about her son, poked holes in the defense’s suggestion that Christian Glass was involved in a car accident the night of his death.
He was driving back from a three-day art trip to Moab, Utah, Sally Glass told the jury Wednesday.
In opening statements, defense attorney Carrie Slinkard suggested that Christian Glass had been in an accident with a white car the night he was shot and killed by former Clear Creek County Deputy Andrew Buen, who faces a second-degree murder charge.
Prosecutors said Glass called 911 for help after he got his car stuck on a boulder in Silver Plume, and that he appeared to be experiencing a mental health crisis when several officers engaged with him for more than an hour.
Body camera footage then shows Buen broke the car's window, shot Glass with bean bag rounds, and used a Taser on him before shooting him five times in the chest.
Slinkard argued there was more damage to the car, implying a more serious accident than getting stuck on a rock.
“This is pretty significant motor vehicle damage, to the point where the bumper on the front of the car had to come off. In the 911 call he talks about a white car. There are fresh white scratches on the side of this vehicle consistent with what he is saying on the phone call,” Slinkard said.
In her testimony Wednesday, Sally Glass told the jury the white scratches were not fresh. They were, instead, from an accident nearly three years prior in 2019.
Sally Glass told the jury her son had blown a tire and was trying to get off the road when he made contact with a white truck.
“He had scrapes along the car where the car had collided with a truck, but it was a big truck,” she said.
The prosecutors presented photos taken by Sally Glass and her husband Simon, showing those same white scrapes along the side of their son’s Honda Pilot.
She testified that the family had never gotten the damage repaired, and the damage was still there the last time she saw her son’s car before his trip to Moab.
Glass had chosen Moab because he loved rocks, his mother testified.
“He was fascinated with them [rocks] from when he was a small boy. When I washed his clothes, He would have various rocks in his pockets. It started when he was about seven. And then as he got older, and I guess you know he worked and he had a bit of his own money, he bought nicer rocks. Colorful rocks, crystals. He just loved rocks, just thought they were beautiful,” Sally Glass said.
The defense has indicated that Buen and other officers on scene considered the rocks in Christian Glass' car a threat, along with a knife, a mallet and a hammer.
“He keeps looking down into his lap, and he keeps looking down to the side of that car because he knew there were knives there,” Slinkard said in her opening statement. “What they see in body worn camera footage is Christian with his arms on the driver wheel of the car, looking down, not realizing that he is constantly looking at all the weapons that he has in his car. And that's important. He has a baton in the car. There’s a knife here, a pocketknife, along with a hammer.”
Sally Glass told the jury the larger knife was a tool her son would use to get rocks out of the ground.
“He used knives and a mallet for rocks to try and get a rock out of the ground. Or if he saw something that was a different color or a different strata, he would use a knife to try and get the rock out,” she said.
The hammer in her son's car was given to him by his father, Sally said.
“My husband is very safety conscious, and we all are given hammers, mallets, first aid kits, various things in case we got stuck.”
As for the butane lighter found in Christian Glass’ car, the defense suggested it was used to smoke drugs. Sally Glass said her son used it for his art – to heat up and melt acrylic paints together, or to set and dry a wet painting.
Earlier in the day, the jury heard from Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Clint Thomason that a backpack full of notebooks had been taken from Glass’ car.
The jury also heard from Taser expert Kevin Sailor, who testified that neither Buen nor Georgetown Marshal Randy Williams’ Tasers delivered enough of a shock to physically incapacitate Christian Glass.
The prosecution’s next witness, Seth Stoughton, was introduced to the jury at the end of the day. Stoughton is a celebrity figure in the world of police tactics, policies and use of force. He’s testified in highly publicized trials, including the criminal trial of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd. He said that George Floyd was not a threat.
In November 2022, a Clear Creek County grand jury indicted Buen alongside his supervisor, former Clear Creek County Deputy Kyle Gould, who wasn’t at the scene that night. According to court documents, Gould was watching the encounter with Glass via a live-streamed body worn camera. He then gave the order for Glass' driver's side window to be broken out.
The 5th Judicial District Attorney's Office offered plea deals to both former Clear Creek deputies in September 2023.
Gould pleaded guilty that November to "duty to report use of force by peace officers - duty to intervene."
He was sentenced to two years of unsupervised probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. As part of the plea agreement, Gould withdrew his POST certification and cannot work as a police officer or security guard in Colorado ever again.
Later that November, the DA’s office charged all six other officers on scene the night of Glass’ death for failing to intervene.
In May 2023, the Glass family was awarded $19 million in a settlement agreement with Clear Creek County, the Colorado State Patrol, the Georgetown Police Department and the Idaho Springs Police Department – all departments with officers on scene that night. Among the many non-economic terms of the settlement, Clear Creek County has implemented a crisis response team to respond to calls. It is the largest police misconduct settlement in Colorado history.
View a full timeline of events in this case here:
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