$9.5 million settlement reached
Deal made with family of unarmed man shot in back by sheriff ’s deputies
Kiowa County last week reached a $9.5 million settlement with the family of Zach Gifford, the unarmed local handyman the county’s undersheriff and a rookie deputy killed with three shots to the back in 2020.
The amount exceeds the Eastern Plains county’s $7.5 million annual budget, but is less than the $10 million maximum the county’s insurance policy would cover. Had the settlement surpassed that cap, the cashstrapped county would have needed to raise taxes to fund it.
“We knew what the insurance policy was and didn’t want to bankrupt the county we came from, where we raised our children,” said Gifford’s mother, Carla Gifford.
“They took everything from us when they killed Zach and we would do anything to get him back. But what we asked for, at least in the civil case, we will be getting, and that’s probably as close to closure as we will come.”
Kiowa County Interim Sheriff Forrest Frazee said Monday he wasn’t aware of a legal settlement.
For their part, the county’s elected commissioners have stayed silent about the April 9, 2020, killing that rattled their quiet community, shook public confidence in local law enforcement and prompted the popular county sheriff to resign.
The three commissioners likewise have not responded to inquiries about Friday’s settlement agreement, which came after the county repeatedly cited Gifford’s drug use in trying to downplay the value of his life.
On April 9, 2020, Gifford, 39, was riding as a passenger in a friend’s pickup truck when Kiowa County Undersheriff Tracy Weisenhorn initiated a traffic stop that the family’s lawyers
argued was a pretext for a drug search. She had been staking out the friend’s home a block away in Brandon, a ghost town on the eastern edge of the county.
Deputy Quinten Stump arrived shortly after, and while patting Gifford down found a small baggie with white powdery substance — later determined to be methamphetamine residue — in his pocket.
Gifford tried to run, but both officers wrestled him to the ground and shocked him with a Taser. Gifford managed to break loose and started running into an empty field when Weisenhorn shot him in the back despite Stump — who knew from searching Gifford that he didn’t have a gun — yelling, “Let him go!”
After Weisenhorn — Stump’s supervisor — fired that first shot, Stump went on to fire two more shots that also hit Gifford in the back.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation found that Gifford did not display a weapon or threaten the officers or anyone else at the time of his killing.
“Tell my parents I love them,” Gifford said, according to Stump’s account to investigators.
For reasons Fifteenth Judicial District Attorney Josh Vogel has not explained, he has not prosecuted Weisenhorn, who shot Gifford first. ThenSheriff Casey Sheridan fired Weisenhorn a year later after local reporter Priscilla Waggoner and the Colorado News Collaborative published an investigation of Gifford’s killing and long-standing problems in the sheriff’s department.
Vogel has filed two counts of attempted second-degree murder and one count of assault with a deadly weapon against Stump. A trial is scheduled for August.
Sheridan had hired Stump despite the fact that the rookie had lost jobs with two other law enforcement agencies in the previous year. The sheriff ultimately fired Stump several months after Gifford’s killing — not for his part in the death or his record of using deadly force on other criminal suspects, but for drunkenly shooting up a traffic sign with his county-issued gun.
Sheridan resigned from his elected sheriff position last spring and has been replaced temporarily by Frazee. The interim sheriff told the Colorado News Collaborative Monday that he has “intentionally made sure not to look into” Gifford’s killing until “the legal matters are over.”
Gifford’s family named Frazee, Sheridan, the county commissioners, Weisenhorn and Stump as defendants in their lawsuit. None of them attended last week’s settlement hearing, during which the family’s lawyers, John Holland and Anna Holland Edwards, argued that Gifford’s methamphetamine use and prior drug arrests should not diminish the value of his life.
Gifford’s father, Larry Gifford, said it was tough to sit through the out-ofcourt hearing in Denver during which his son’s worth was being discussed. “There were a couple of times I needed a seat belt to make sure I didn’t get up and say something.”
The attorneys representing the Giffords and their two surviving sons played videos of testimonials by residents throughout the county talking about Gifford’s habit of mowing lawns and doing repair jobs free of cost for his neighbors and older locals, and the joy he brought to his work and relationships.
“Zach was exuberant for life, and anybody who knew him knows that,” Carla Gifford said.
She said justice for her late son hinges not just on the civil settlement, but also on the outcome of Stump’s trial this summer. She notes justice also will hinge on whether Vogel reconsiders his decision not to criminally charge Weisenhorn along with Stump.
“We still very much want her prosecuted,” Larry Gifford adds.
Because they worked for the county when they killed Gifford, both Weisenhorn and Stump were covered by its insurance policy, protecting them from personal liability.
In addition to the $9.5 million to be paid by the county’s insurance carrier, the family also won nonmonetary terms, including improved use-of-force training for Kiowa County sheriff’s deputies and the assurance that a memorial will be built in their son’s memory. They’re eyeing a playground next to a new pool in Eads.
“This incident can’t rule our lives,” Carla Gifford said. “It can’t cause us to harbor things that will make us bitter. We need our lives to function and move in a positive way toward our future.”
This story is brought to you by COLAB, the Colorado News Collaborative, a nonprofit coalition of more than 170 newsrooms across Colorado working together to better serve the public. Learn more at colabnews.co.