by either the prosecutor or her police officer husband, authorities said.

The shooting, shortly before midnight Monday, comes two weeks after Colorado’s prisons director was slain as he answered the front door to his home, and two days after the district attorney of Kaufman County in Texas was found shot to death with his wife.

An assistant prosecutor in the Kaufman County district attorney’s office was shot to death on January 31, and authorities have said both Texas murders and the March 19 slaying of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements appeared to be targeted killings rather than random acts of violence.

In light of the three previous cases, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is leading the probe into the latest shooting, which occurred in Hot Sulphur Springs, about 95 miles northwest of Denver.

“There are no apparent ties to recent shootings; however, investigators continue to pursue all possible leads and background information on this (dead) person,” the bureau said in a written statement.

Authorities did not immediately release the names of the deputy prosecutor and her husband in connection with Monday night’s shooting.

The deputy district attorney made a 911 emergency call and reported that a man was at her door “behaving very erratically,” police said.

The prosecutor then told dispatchers that the stranger forced his way into her home. An altercation ensued inside and shots were fired, leaving the unidentified man dead, police said.

A spokeswoman for one of the agencies investigating the incident told Reuters that the prosecutor and her husband, himself a sheriff’s deputy, both fired at the intruder, but it is too early in the probe to know who fired the fatal shot.

The Colorado prosecutor and her husband both suffered minor injuries and have been placed on paid leave pending the results of the investigation.

Clements, the state’s prisons chief, was shot to death on March 19 when he answered the front door of his home near Monument, Colorado, about 45 miles south of Denver.

Authorities have matched the handgun used in Clements’ slaying to the weapon used by a recent Colorado parolee, 28-year-old Evan Spencer Ebel, in a gun battle with police following a high-speed chase through Decatur, Texas, last month.

Investigators have named Ebel, a member of a white supremacist prison gang, as a suspect in the killing of Clements and in the death of pizza delivery man Nathan Leon, 27, who was found dead in suburban Denver two days earlier.

Ebel was killed in the shootout with Texas police. A search of his car turned up a pizza deliverer’s shirt, visor, pizza box and heat bag.

The post Intruder killed at Colorado deputy DA’s home appeared first on Metro.us.

against the former graduate student for the “Dark Knight” shooting rampage that killed 12 moviegoers.

It is widely expected that Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler will attempt to win a death sentence against the 25-year-old California native.

Brauchler already has announced he has a death penalty lawyer on the prosecution team and he rejected a defense offer to let Holmes plead guilty and serve a life sentence if capital punishment is taken off the table.

Holmes is accused of opening fire inside a suburban Denver theater during a screening of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises” last July, in one of the deadliest outbursts of gun violence in the United States in recent years.

Holmes is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder for the shooting massacre that also wounded 58 moviegoers. Another dozen people suffered non-gunshot injuries as they fled the Aurora, Colorado, cinema.

Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester entered a not guilty plea for Holmes last month, but said he would consider allowing that to be changed to not guilty by reason of insanity.

Last week, public defenders said in a court filing that Holmes was willing to plead guilty and serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole if prosecutors would not try to execute their client.

While Holmes’ attorneys said they are prepared to mount an insanity defense, they wrote in the filing that “Mr. Holmes is currently willing to resolve the case to bring the proceedings to a speedy and definite conclusion for all involved.”

Brauchler fired back in a written response, calling the move by the defense improper at this stage of the case and “that it was filed for the intended purpose of generating the predictable pretrial publicity.”

“The only conclusion that an objective reader would reach … is that the defendant knows that he is guilty, the defense attorneys know he is guilty and that both of them know that he was not criminally insane,” Brauchler wrote.

In court pleadings, public defenders Daniel King and Tamara Brady have said Holmes has been hospitalized twice since his arrest, once for “potential self-inflicted injuries.”

At one point, jailers determined Holmes was a danger to himself and in “immediate need of a psychiatric evaluation.” He was transported by ambulance to a Denver psychiatric ward “where he was held for several days, frequently in restraints,” his lawyers wrote.

Also at issue at Monday’s hearing is whether a Fox News reporter will be compelled to testify about confidential sources she used in a story that said a notebook Holmes sent to a psychiatrist detailed his plans to commit mass murder.

Sylvester agreed to hear arguments from lawyers for New York-based reporter Jana Winter, whose story violated a gag order he had imposed in the case.

The post James Holmes: Will Aurora shooter face death penalty? appeared first on Metro.us.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper recently signed a package of contentious gun control bills while surrounded by family members of victims of the shootings in Aurora and Littleton.

According to the Denver Post, Tom Clements, 58, was appointed executive director of Colorado Prisons in January 2011.

Colorado police say they have no suspects, but prisons have been placed on a partial lock-down and security has been increased in the state capitol and governor’s home.

The laws the governor signed hours later require background checks for private gun sales and ban magazines with more than 15 rounds.

Hickenlooper called Clements’ murder “an act of intimidation.”

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

The post Tom Clements: Colorado official shot dead before new gun acts signed appeared first on Metro.us.