As 10 Safeway locations across the state are set to hit the chopping block and close by Nov. 7, Heather Halpape, director of communications for Albertsons Companies, Inc. (Safeway falling under the corporate umbrella), confirmed to The Chronicle-News that the Trinidad location would be part of its “strategic consolidation” and “customer-focused innovation.”
While giving her report during the City’s regular meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 16, City Manager Tara Marshall explained that the recent power outage in Trinidad was caused by a raccoon that “jumped” on a main circuit breaker.
On Sept. 17, the Colorado Bureau of Investigations activated a missing indigenous person report for Alexes Hamilton, 33, who her family last heard from back in June 2025.
Last month, The Chronicle-News broke a story regarding a fatal plane crash that took the lives of the pilot and passenger of a private plane traveling from Pueblo to Texas that lost communication near Trinidad and crashed into the Sierra Grande (an extinct stratovolcano) near Des Moines, in Northern New Mexico.
On Sept. 7, Sierra Taylor Braunns, 24, was arrested following a response from a Trinidad Police officer who was dispatched to a possible child abuse incident, which claimed a person saw a video of Braunns wrapping tape around her kids’ necks and head.
In a U.S District Court document from Sept. 9, Magistrate Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell approved a motion, partially, for a civil action against Las Animas County Coroner, Dominic Verquer, to proceed, following claims he had improperly handled the remains of plaintiff Sheri Huff’s father, Fredrick Huff.
The 31-year-old from Chihuahua, Mexico, Adrian Arballo-Conteras, found himself at the Las Animas County Courthouse on Wednesday for a court hearing, which saw the judge give him an opportunity to make bond, despite the prosecution arguing the “flight-risk” and potential immigration detention, which could cause him to miss future hearings.
Last month, Mt. San Rafael Hospital announced, in a letter to its patients, that its clinics would no longer provide opioid management of chronic pain with listed exceptions.
During a court hearing at the Las Animas County Courthouse on Sept. 10, Marino Scott’s attorney, while attempting to convince the judge to alter his client’s bond, claimed that blood results from San Rafael Hospital showed no opioids in his blood stream, after an alleged incident which authorities released him the hospital following what they claimed was his attempt to “destroy” fentanyl pills by stomping on them and ingesting them.
With 2025 being an odd election year, local politics will take center stage for Trinidad voters, who will have the opportunity to choose a new mayor and half of the members of its City Council.