Report: ‘Unhinged’ Basalt man threatens residents
A Basalt man has been charged with stalking one female neighbor, harassing and racially taunting another and allegedly extorting a former roommate — all in the past two weeks, according to police reports and court documents.
Christopher Rose, 51, faces four felony charges, as well as several misdemeanors, for allegedly harassing the two people for money — and psychedelic mushrooms as well in one case — and repeatedly threatening all three of them, according to the documents.
“When I get out of jail, I’m going across the street, getting drunk, going back to Basalt and it’s going to be a massacre,” Rose told a Basalt police officer who arrested him June 1. “A f—ing massacre.”
Problems with Rose began May 24, when Rose’s neighbor told police he had been repeatedly harassing her both when she was in her home and when she’d leave to smoke a cigarette in her car, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in Pitkin County District Court.
The alleged harassment included yelling, “You better pay me my money!” outside her bedroom window at 12:30 a.m., yelling at her from his deck to pay him $20 and leaving a handwritten note on her car demanding money, the affidavit states.
“(The neighbor) said she has always gotten along with Rose but in the last few weeks he has become unhinged and has been verbally attacking one of their neighbors,” according to the document. “(The reporting neighbor) said that she has begun defending (the other neighbor) when Rose becomes verbally abusive towards (her).”
The next day, the woman, who “looked very scared and was shaking,” called police and told them that Rose knocked on her bedroom window again the night before demanding money and telling her if he didn’t get it, ‘your life is f—ed,’” the affidavit states. The next morning, she said he pounded on her window again while screaming she had five minutes to pay up and calling her “a little troll.”
Rose screamed at a police officer and ripped up a summons for harassment before storming off when police located him, according to the affidavit. He was later served another summons.
On May 31, the neighbor called again and said Rose was continuing to harass her, including following her and approaching her on the street aggressively, according to the affidavit. He also sent her numerous text messages in which Rose called her names, including racial epithets for Asians and African Americans, the affidavit states.
Rose was arrested by Basalt police for stalking June 1 and taken to Pitkin County Jail. The next day, District Judge Chris Seldin allowed him out of jail on a personal recognizance bond, which means he put up no money to get out of jail.
Before his arrest June 1, Rose allegedly called a former male roommate six times, then called the man’s boss in Aspen three times, according to an Aspen Police report. He allegedly demanded $100 or a half-ounce of psychedelic mushrooms and threatened to tell the man’s boss he was stealing if he didn’t pay, the report states.
When Aspen police contacted Rose at the jail and charged him with extortion, he told them he understood not to contact his former roommate again. Instead, Rose told police he would “rob” the man, the report states.
“He made a lot of threats … including having seven guns at his house and that the ‘community’ will regret holding him in the jail overnight,” according to the report. “He explained he had a bomb at his house.”
The former roommate said he moved out after Rose kicked down his locked bedroom door.
On June 5, the first neighbor Rose allegedly harassed called police and said he was yelling at her. The woman, who is of Asian descent, recorded Rose calling her names and telling her she was in “big trouble,” the affidavit states. The names include repeated use of a racial epithet for Asian people.
That got Rose charged with violating a protection order — the neighbor was a named a protected person after Rose’s first arrest — as well as felony intimidation of a witness, commission of a bias-motivated or hate crime, and violation of bail bonds conditions.
Rose had not yet been arrested on the outstanding arrest warrant as of Monday afternoon.
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