By Jakob Rodgers
The Gazette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Thomas Guolee’s efforts to break into a former prisons guard’s house in late December were anything but discreet, according to arrest affidavit released Thursday.
Guolee, 34, talked to several neighbors of the former prisons employee - once asking if the man was home, and then claiming to drop a car off for him - before he tried breaking inside, the affidavit said.
A judge ruled Wednesday that the document must be made available in response to a petition filed by a media coalition that included The Gazette.
Guolee is accused of firing on Colorado Springs police during the Dec. 30 attempted burglary and leading them on a 3-mile car chase. Police shot Guolee after he crashed his car.
His arrest has raised fresh questions about whether prisons workers once again face reprisals from former inmates.
Guolee, a recent parolee, was once questioned as a possible accomplice in the 2013 slaying of Colorado’s top prison chief but was never charged in the killing. The killing led to a report of a “hit list” against the 211 Crew’s enemies.
The affidavit, however, offered few answers on why Guolee was at the former prison guard’s house in December.
Neighbors on Sierra Springs Drive told police they grew increasingly suspicious of Goulee on Dec. 30, but none of them knew why Guolee wanted to get in the house.
Guolee yelled at one neighbor “Hey are you going to help me?” the affidavit said, and Guolee allegedly told another neighbor that he lost his key to the garage door.
Inside the home, the former prison guard’s wife said she heard banging outside and saw a dark figure near her garage door. She called 911 and barricaded herself in a room with her two children, who are toddlers.
Her husband, the former prison guard, was in Denver that evening while working at another job. He left the Colorado Department of Corrections on Dec. 21, after just less than 4 years with the department, a prisons spokeswoman said.
Guolee never got inside the house, according to investigators.
Colorado Springs police say Guolee fired on officers who responded to the break-in, then jumped in his car and fled. The ensuing chase ended when police shot Guolee after he crashed his car and got out of the vehicle, according to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating the shooting.
Guolee has been charged with 19 counts in the Dec. 30 incident, including attempted murder of a police officer and attempted second-degree burglary. He remains held on a $1 million bond.
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