University will begin checking backgrounds after UMC attack
Stabbing suspect employed after 2001 arrest
By Laura Snider
University of Colorado officials said they will begin doing background checks on all new employees after a former campus cashier — who was hired despite a criminally violent history — was accused of cutting a freshman’s neck Monday.
The university did not do a background check on Kenton Drew Astin, who was sent to a state mental hospital after he was accused of attempting to stab a 21-year-old Longmont man in 2001.
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That policy will be changed immediately so that background checks are required for all new employees, CU Chancellor G.P. “Bud” Peterson said Monday. University officials have not decided whether to conduct checks on the more than 7,000 employees already working at CU.
Astin worked as a cashier at the Alferd Packer Grill in the University Memorial Center from Oct. 10 until April 10, and his term of employment was “uneventful,” according to Peterson.
Astin’s six-month temporary employment in the food court was arranged through a partnership between the university and the Chinook Clubhouse, a social and vocational rehabilitation service for mentally ill adults run by the Boulder County Mental Health Center.
“Work is like medicine to these people,” JoAnn Dorio, the clubhouse’s vocational director, told the Camera last summer. “It makes them feel valued by playing an important role in society.”
Seven current CU employees who were also referred by the Chinook Clubhouse have been temporarily suspended with pay pending background checks, Peterson said. CU has worked with the program for 17 years without incident.
Court records show that Astin, now 39, was found not guilty by reason of insanity on charges of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault and felony possession of narcotics, all stemming from the 2001 incident.
According to Camera archives, Astin, who was a 33-year-old transient at the time, told police that he took a knife out of his bag and tried to stab a man in a Salvation Army store because he didn’t like the way the man looked. The man, 21-year-old Dylan Trembley, was barefoot, had both of his ears pierced and had a tattoo on his right leg. The two men had never met before.
Trembley escaped with cuts on his right hand and the back of one of his ankles.
Astin, who had previously been treated for schizophrenia, was sent to the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo for rehabilitation. The average length of stay for patients in the hospital’s Institute for Forensic Psychiatry — the program that treats patients ordered to the hospital by the criminal justice system — is five to seven years, according to Eunice Wolther, public information officer for the mental health institute.
Patients must work their way through four stages of therapy before they can be released, and even then, they begin with a conditional release in which their case is followed by a therapist.
“It all depends on the individual person,” Wolther said. “How sick they were when they came in, how the therapies are working and how the drug intervention is working.”
Astin was released from the hospital 2 1/2 years ago into the care of Boulder County Mental Health Center. The Chinook Clubhouse worked with Astin for two years before recommending him for hire at the university, according to Chancellor Peterson.
Most recently, Astin was employed at a courier service in Denver, but the service told 7NEWS that Astin quit his job Friday, saying he was going on to “bigger and better things.”
Astin’s criminal history in Colorado includes three previous arrests for trespassing, larceny and failure to appear in court, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. The bureau also reports that he has several aliases, including “Dylan Klebold” — the name of one of two gunmen who killed 12 fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School in 1999.
Astin lived in a house on 19th Street near Baseline Road in Boulder that is owned by the Mental Health Center of Boulder County.
Astin’s roommate Peter Boger, 59, told 7NEWS that Astin was a good roommate and always paid his bills on time.
“He’s never made any threats to me and never threatened anybody that I know of,” he said. “As far as I know, he was getting plenty of treatment.”
Still, 7NEWS reported that Boger said Astin had burned an upside-down cross on the wall using lit cigarettes and that the words “GAS: 666″ and “RODENTS” were scribbled across music sheets in Astin’s room.