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AURORA | A former Aurora police officer accused of punching a disabled woman during an argument in January will face trial for first-degree assault among other charges stemming from the alleged attack, an Arapahoe County judge ruled Wednesday.
During the hearing, witnesses said Douglas Harroun also strangled the woman until she lost consciousness and threatened to have her arrested, despite being off-duty at the time.
Harroun, 33, is facing charges of first-degree assault, a class 3 felony, second-degree assault, a class 4 felony, attempting to influence a public servant, a class 4 felony and third-degree assault, a class 1 misdemeanor in connection with a Jan. 11 incident where police were called to an assault in the apartment parking lot in the 15000 block of East Briarwood Circle in Aurora.
Police requested the support of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office because one of the parties was an Aurora Police Department officer, according to an arrest affidavit.
Investigators said Harroun and his wife were driving into the complex where they lived and got into an argument with a woman who was walking her dog off leash in the road.
The woman yelled at Harroun for following her and he and his wife then got into a verbal argument with her, the affidavit said. They then got out of the car and continued to argue.
Witnesses told investigators they saw Douglas punch the victim in the left side of her face, the affidavit said. The victim “fell to the ground and Douglas got on top of her and continued to punch her in the head four to five more times.”
The affidavit said the woman has a chronic pain disorder that affects the nerves in half of her body.
Harroun was placed on indefinite suspension without pay following his arrest, and resigned from the department at the end of January.
Last week he was charged with first- and second-degree assault in connection with an incident where he shot a bystander in the leg during the arrest of a domestic violence suspect on New Year’s Eve. His first hearing on that charge is set for next week.
In a hearing Wednesday morning, Harroun’s lawyer David Goddard argues that the prosecution had not effectively demonstrated that Harroun caused or intended to cause the victim serious bodily injury, which made the first-degree assault charge invalid.
After listening to arguments from Goddard and testimony from four witnesses called by the prosecution, Judge Michelle Jones rejected the request to drop the charge.
“There was a substantial risk of death to (victim),” Jones said.
The prosecution called three Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office employees who were involved in the investigation and Chelsie Saldate, a registered nurse who conducted a forensic examination of the victim after the assault.
Deputy Keith Basile spoke to the victim in the ER, and he said she had physical signs of injury and appeared to be very upset.
“She appeared to be in a lot of pain, both physically and emotionally,” he said.
Basile said the victim told him that Harroun had been driving so close to her dog that she thought he was going to hit him, and asked Harroun why he was following them so closely. She said that Harroun became verbally confrontational with her.
The victim had a canister of pepper spray in her pocket and told Basile that she at one point she threatened Harroun with it while he was yelling at her to try to get him to back down, but she did not deploy it.
From there, she said that Harroun knocked her to the ground, punched her six to eight times in the head with a closed fist and used his right hand to put pressure around her neck to the point where she had difficulty breathing.
She told Basile that Harroun also said that he was a police officer and that she was under arrest.
Goddard argued that Harroun had not been trying to cause the victim serious bodily injury when he was straddling her after knocking her to the ground.
“He’s simply holding her down until other law enforcement has arrived,” he said.
He also argued that the first witness, an Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Deputy who was at the scene, had not appropriately identified Harroun when asked to describe him in the courtroom because he said Harroun was the man wearing blue and white at the defense table, and both Goddard and Harroun were coincidentally wearing blue and white.
“I think the argument that the defense counsel strangled (victim) is a little frivolous,” Jones said in response.
Goddard’s main argument stemmed from the fact that an emergency room doctor who treated the victim directly after the assault said that she had not suffered serious bodily injury, and signed a form to that effect. From there, she was medically cleared to receive a forensic exam from Saldate.
On the witness stand, Saldate said that her exam of the victim showed physical symptoms that she had suffered an anoxic event due to being strangled by Harroun, meaning that oxygen to her brain was cut off. This causes the permanent loss of brain cells and can be a factor in long-term problems including memory loss and stroke, she said.
Saldate said that she has conducted hundreds of forensic exams involving strangulation, and that an ER doctor would not have the specific expertise to rule on whether the victim had suffered serious policy injury.
“If you asked a doctor to do a strangulation exam, they would have no clue where to even start,” she said.
During cross-examination, Goddard questioned why Saldate was sure the victim had lost consciousness when the victim herself couldn’t remember it. Along with pointing to a number of physical symptoms, she said this is common among strangulation victims.
“When you’re asleep, you don’t know that you’re asleep,” she said.
After a brief recess for deliberation, Jones ultimately sided with the prosecution, ruling that due to the intensity of the altercation there was enough evidence to try Harroun for first-degree assault.
Intent was shown that Harroun “in fact intended to cause serious bodily injury to her when he placed his right hand on her neck and pushed his full body weight up on it,” Jones said.
Harroun is currently free in lieu of $25,000 bond in connection to the Jan. 11 case and a $50,000 bond in connection to the Dec. 31 case, according to online records.
His arraignment in the Jan. 11 case is scheduled for Aug. 21.
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