STAUNTON, CO – A park ranger who claimed he was attacked and stabbed while working has been busted for allegedly making the whole thing up – triggering a massive manhunt and putting schools on lockdown for hours.
Callum Heskett, 26, got hit with serious charges Thursday after investigators say his story about getting knifed by some random attacker just didn’t add up. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife ranger now faces felony counts for tampering with evidence and trying to mess with public officials, plus a bunch of other charges.
The drama started Tuesday morning when Heskett radioed in around 9 a.m. from Staunton State Park saying he’d been stabbed and his attacker took off on foot. He even gave cops a detailed description of the supposed bad guy, which got the whole Jefferson County Sheriff’s department scrambling.
What happened next was nuts – authorities launched this huge search operation with drones buzzing all over the place. They sent out alerts to over 8,600 people in the area warning them to stay inside because some dangerous stabber was supposedly running around loose.
Schools went into full lockdown mode while helicopters airlifted Heskett to the hospital. For hours, two innocent people got detained and grilled by cops before investigators figured out they had nothing to do with any attack.
But here’s the thing – the more detectives talked to Heskett, the more his story started falling apart. “As the investigation progressed, inconsistencies in Heskett’s statements emerged,” the sheriff’s office said. “After investigators conducted their first interview with Heskett, it became even more clear that his story was flawed and erroneous.”
Now the guy’s facing a laundry list of charges including reckless endangerment, obstruction of government operations, false reporting, and official misconduct. He’s still stuck in the hospital but will get transferred to county jail once doctors clear him.
The whole mess has Colorado Parks and Wildlife scrambling to do damage control. Assistant Director of Law Enforcement Ty Petersburg tried to smooth things over, saying they appreciate the sheriff’s “professionalism and partnership” in figuring out what really went down.
You’ve got to wonder what was going through Heskett’s head when he cooked up this scheme. The guy managed to waste thousands of taxpayer dollars, scare the hell out of parents and kids, and turn himself into a felon all in one morning. That’s what you call a really bad day at the office.
Staunton State Park sits about 30 miles southwest of Denver and usually deals with hikers and campers, not fake crime scenes. Now they’ve got to explain to visitors why their seasonal ranger decided to play pretend with a knife attack.
The investigation wrapped up pretty quick once detectives started poking holes in Heskett’s story. Turns out when you lie to a bunch of cops and FBI agents, they’re pretty good at figuring that out.
