VA document says Douglas County gunman fled mental ward

A Veterans Affairs document obtained by The Associated Press says the gunman who killed a Colorado sheriff’s deputy escaped from the mental health ward of a VA hospital in Wyoming in 2014 but was located and returned.

The document was provided to the AP by a congressional aide on condition of anonymity because the aide was not authorized to release it. The document was first reported by The Denver Post.

Colorado authorities say Matthew Riehl fatally shot Douglas County Deputy Zackari Parrish and wounded four other officers on Sunday. Riehl was killed by a SWAT team.

The VA document says Riehl was hospitalized at the veterans medical center in Sheridan, Wyoming, in April 2014 after a psychotic episode. It says he escaped but was found and brought back.

The document identifies Riehl as an Army veteran who was honorably discharged.

Authorities had been contacted about the mental health of Riehl over a month before the shooting. After Riehl published several social media posts critical of University of Wyoming professors, the campus police chief says officers called police in Lone Tree, Colorado, in November to warn them about Riehl, suggesting his rants were indicative of mental illness.

He was also a licensed lawyer for five years in Wyoming before voluntarily giving his license up in 2016.

Wyoming Bar Association executive director Sharon Wilkinson says Matthew Riehl practiced at a law firm in the small city of Rawlins and later opened his own practice.

She says he was admitted to the bar in May 2011 and voluntarily withdrew in October 2016, making him ineligible to practice law in the state. That’s the same year records indicate he moved back to Colorado.

Wilkinson says the bar received no complaints about Riehl.