Colorado Department of Corrections Executive Director Tom Clements was killed Tuesday morning, fatally shot in the doorway to his home.
The shooting of Clements, who managed the state’s public and private incarceration and probation systems, was reported by his family, who called 911 at 8:37 p.m. from their home in Monument, Colo., in a wealthy neighborhood surrounded by the forests just north of Colorado Springs.
Investigators working through the night were still trying to figure out whether Clements was shot as he opened the door, who did it and why.
"We have no known suspect at this time," Lt. Jeff Kramer, spokesman for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, told the Denver Post. "There is no evidence of a home invasion. Whether he was specifically targeted or this was random, we don't know."
Many are noting the sad irony of the shooting, just a few hours before the man who appointed Clements to his post, bringing him from Missouri to take it, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, was scheduled to sign into law three separate gun-control bills.
The bills were passed to expand background checks on gun purchases to cover any other kind of transfer of a firearm, and to limit magazine capacity to 15 bullets.
While it is too early to say whether such a rule would have done anything to prevent the attack on Clements, the bills started their trek toward becoming law after a larger attack last summer, when a gunman entered a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. during a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises," detonated a tear gas grenade, murdered 12 people and injured 58 others.
The new laws have been controversial, with county sheriffs telling the governor that they cannot and will not enforce the laws.
“They’re feel-good, knee-jerk reactions that are unenforceable,” Weld County Sheriff Jeff Cooke told the Greeley Tribune on March 15.
