No obvious injuries, foul play in deaths of elk hunters in southern Colorado, authorities say - Tracy Ross & Olivia Prentzel, The Colorado Sun
Authorities probing the deaths of two elk hunters who were missing for roughly a week in the Rio Grande National Forest found no obvious injuries on their bodies or initial signs of foul play, the local coroner said Friday.
An investigation into what caused the deaths of Andrew Porter and Ian Stasko is ongoing, said Conejos County Coroner Richard Martin.
Autopsies were expected to be conducted Monday in El Paso County, Martin said.
Search and rescue teams found two unidentified bodies about 11 a.m. Thursday about 2 miles from the Rio de Los Pinos trailhead following a massive search effort.
Porter, of Asheville, North Carolina, and Stasko, of Salt Lake City, Utah, were last heard from Sept. 11 about 3 p.m. when Porter shared his location with his fiancée, Bridget Murphy, from his Garmin InReach satellite device.
Both were experienced outdoorsmen, Murphy previously told The Colorado Sun. Last year they spent a month hunting elk in the Crazy Mountains of Montana. Murphy said they were the kind of people who built outdoor forts for fun at age 12.
The men, both 25, were hunting southwest of Monte Vista in Game Management Unit 81, which stretches from the Continental Divide on the west to the Rio Grande River on the east and down to the border of New Mexico.
Martin, who did not see the scene of the recovery, said no determination has been made about cause or manner of death.
“It’s a big mystery to a whole bunch of people,” Martin said.
The search for evidence to pinpoint what caused the men’s deaths could take time, said Gunnison County Coroner Michael Barnes, who is not directly involved in the case.
“For this case specifically, the scene may encompass a larger geographic area with natural hazards that prolong evidence collection and documentation,” Barnes wrote in an email to The Sun. “The time it takes to conduct a thorough death investigation can be a hardship for loved ones desperately seeking answers.”
LAST HEARD FROM A TRAILHEAD AT 11,700 FEET
The last ping from Porter’s InReach device came from near Stasko’s car, which was parked at the trailhead, at 11,700 feet. Authorities found wet clothes in the car. But none of the gear Porter would need to hunt, harvest or pack out an elk was in the car.
Thunderstorms were reported in Alamosa, the nearest National Weather Service site to the trailhead where the men were last reported, Sept. 12 and 13, Makoto Moore, a meteorologist with the agency’s office in Pueblo. The storms likely originated in the eastern San Juan mountains, Moore said.
“You’re going to get a higher potential for lightning, the gusty winds, and maybe even some small hail,” Moore said of the higher elevation terrain where the men were hunting. “But again, we don’t have any stations up there that could give us the daily or even an hourly data.”
By Sept. 14, overnight temperatures dropped to the mid-to-low-30s in Alamosa, which sits at 7,500 feet elevation.
“Certainly the elements were probably working against them,” Moore said.
During the week Porter and Stasko were missing, multiple search and rescue teams, law enforcement agencies and volunteer hikers, horseback riders and hunters searched for them.
Bob Rodgers is the search and rescue resource officer for the New Mexico Department of Public Safety in Albuquerque. He said after Conejos County Sheriff Garth Crowther contacted him for assistance on Monday, he dispatched “a bunch of resources” on Tuesday and Wednesday, including drones, ATVs and around 30 volunteer searchers.
They combed the area off of the Rio de Los Pinos trail, he said, zeroing in on a large bowl that topped out at over 11,000 feet. He characterized the terrain there as “really rough and really steep” with typical cold and windy mountain weather. He said when Porter and Stasko went hunting they would have had to “climb up out of the bowl to go hunt in different directions.”
But any storms that had been in the area had moved out by the time his searchers arrived, and the weather was good, he said. His teams helped search Tuesday and Wednesday, until the Colorado Search and Rescue Association “activated and brought a bunch of resources.” At that point he determined his teams were no longer needed and called them back to New Mexico.
Friends of Porter remembered him as a quiet, thoughtful person who helped ground Murphy. Alex Stokman, who owns a Missoula-based company called Venery that teaches women to hunt, said, “Andrew was quiet, focused and creative with a steady presence that was deeply supportive of those around him.”
And Draya Grangroth, a hunting guide, author and photographer, said Porter’s passion for hunting shone through his soft-spoken demeanor.
Porter was incredibly supportive of Murphy, whom he planned to marry in May 2026, Stokman and Grangroth said. Two things were “very apparent” to anyone who spent time with Porter, Grangroth said, “his passion and love for the outdoors, and his love for Bridget.”
Stasko and Porter attended Albemarle High School in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The latest chapter in the Yazzie-Martinez case: What did PED learn from statewide tour? - Noah Alcala Bach, Albuquerque Journal
As the deadline approaches for the Public Education Department to turn in a draft of its court-mandated remedial plan to improve education in New Mexico, its secretary, Mariana Padilla, said the department is using input from communities across the state.
“I’m just so pleased about the amount of participation that we received,” Padilla said in an interview with the Journal earlier this month.
In August, PED toured the state, visiting almost a dozen cities, including Albuquerque. The department hosted open-house-style events to seek input from parents, teachers, tribal leaders and students. It also held remote sessions.
“It reinforced that we need to invest in our teachers. It reinforced that we need to invest in the actual facilities of our school, the programs that make kids want to show up to school,” Padilla said. “We have to create an education system that really engages our students.”
In April, Santa Fe District Court Judge Matthew Wilson issued the latest ruling in a legal battle that has spanned over a decade, which seven years prior determined that the state of New Mexico’s education system is violating the constitutional rights of some of its students.
The suit originated in 2014 when Wilhelmina Yazzie, the parent of a student at Gallup-McKinley County Schools, and Louise Martinez, the parent of an Albuquerque Public Schools student, joined other parents to file a lawsuit against the state, tasking it to improve its education system, particularly for Indigenous and minority students. In 2018, the late Judge Sarah Singleton ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
Padilla said PED had been communicating with the plaintiff’s attorneys and that the plaintiffs attended some of the listening tour meetings.
However, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents the Martinez plaintiffs, said that wasn’t accurate.
“Martinez plaintiffs were never reached out to by the Secretary, so we now are waiting on a kind of word about what (the remedial plan) will look like,” Ernest Herrera, Western Regional Counsel for MALDEF, said in an interview. “As for the listening tours, I’m glad that there was an effort to do that outreach, but I think it was difficult, given the short notice and some of the like time of day and location, for some of the plaintiffs and community members to be able to attend.”
The New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, who represents the Yazzie plaintiffs, also said they haven’t been brought along to collaborate on the plan yet.
“We haven’t been directly involved in shaping the state’s plan so far, our team has been gathering input through our own community engagement events and will continue doing so to ensure the state’s plan incorporates the recommendations and perspectives of those most directly impacted,” Melissa Candelaria, education director for the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, said in a statement Friday. “We will be sharing that feedback and continuing the conversation with PED in the coming weeks.”
PED must produce a draft of the remedial plan by Oct. 1, and then file a comprehensive final plan and a status report by Nov. 3. The department has already completed the first step ordered by Wilson, selecting outside consultants to assist in the remedial plan.
The state agency tapped the New Mexico-based Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Foundation and the Phoenix-based nonprofit WestEd, paying each entity roughly $200,000.
“When you have that many community voices, which, all told, I think was around 1,500 individual participants, the variety of input really ranges,” Gwen Perea Warniment, president and CEO of the LANL Foundation, said in an interview Friday.
She said the main themes heard were a need for more multicultural education and “responsive teaching, honoring culture and language,” as well as a need for strong teachers, improved special education services, and “needing mechanisms for ensuring that funding is adequately used.”
Perea Warniment, who served as director of the Legislative Education Study Committee from 2022 to 2024 — the primary policymaking arm for the state’s education laws — said she was encouraged to see PED seek input for the remedial plan.
“I feel like the PED did a great job of leaning in with us, letting us lead facilitation, and also being present, really endeavoring to be there, to listen and do a good job of listening, as opposed to taking a defensive stance,” Perea Warniment said.
But she said the road ahead to reforming education in New Mexico — a state with some of the lowest test scores in the country — is still a long one.
“This is a long game, so I’m not sure what the court will decide and how the action plan plays a role in sort of putting anything to rest,” Perea Warniment said. “But I think transformation of the system to meet the needs of students in New Mexico is a long game, and an action plan is one piece of it.”