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MorningMagazine_2025-04-28 Gabrielle Mendoza
Fifth Colorado Measles Case
Colorado has its fifth confirmed case of measles this year, but for the first time it’s in someone who was vaccinated.
State health officials say cases like this latest one are rare, because the measles vaccine is so effective.
The Denver Post says that the patient, identified only as an adult, had been to Chihuahua, Mexico, recently. That makes it the fourth of Colorado’s five cases that are linked to travel there.
Nationwide, nearly nine hundred measles cases have been reported this year, most of them in Texas, according to the Associated Press.
Two New Abortion Rights Laws
Governor Jared Polis has signed two bills that strengthen abortion rights in Colorado.
One of the new laws establishes a constitutional right to abortion in Colorado. It stems from voter-approved Amendment 79, which passed last fall. The Denver Post says the new law also requires abortion care coverage for Medicaid patients, and for Child Health Plan Plus program recipients using state money.
Insurance plans covering public employees will also have to cover abortion care under the new law.
The other new law the governor signed strengthens Colorado’s shield law, to protect providers and patients from out-of-state investigations and other actions.
At last week’s signing, Governor Polis said that Colorado, in his words, “is making sure that we are completely protecting the right to choose.”
Rock Throwing Conviction
A twenty-year-old Colorado man will be sentenced in June, following his conviction on first-degree murder in the rock-throwing death of an Arvada woman two years ago.
A jury found Joseph Koenig guilty on Friday. The Colorado Sun says that first-degree murder in Colorado carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
Also according to The Sun, Koenig and two others went on a rock-throwing spree that killed twenty-year-old Alexa Bartell when a rock smashed through her car windshield as she drove on Indiana Street near the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge.
The other two men, Nicholas Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak, each took a plea deal on lesser charges and testified against Koenig. Both are expected to be sentenced in early May.
Wolf Death
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the death of a gray wolf in Rocky Mountain National Park.
The wolf is at least the sixth to die among those that have been reintroduced to Colorado in the last year-and-a-half.
The cause of death is not known at this time. It’s being investigated because gray wolves are protected by the Endangered Species Act, according to The Denver Post.
The Post also says that at least some of the released wolves, who wear collars that allow them to be tracked, have roamed into the western portions of metropolitan Denver.
