Hours after the Ouray County Plaindealer published a story detailing the alleged violent sexual assault of a teenage girl at the Ouray police chief’s house, someone stole hundreds of copies out of nearly every newspaper rack across the county, publishers say.

The front-page story, written by co-publisher Erin McIntyre, broke the news that three men – teenagers at the time – were arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl multiple times during a late-night party at the home of Ouray Police Chief Jeff Wood in May.

Wood declined to comment for the Plaindealer’s story and did not respond to a request for comment Friday. In a statement Thursday, Ouray city officials said no personnel are being investigated in relation to the case.

McIntyre and co-publisher Mike Wiggins started getting calls and emails on Thursday morning from readers who found the empty vending racks, and they soon learned that someone had stolen more than 200 copies of the Plaindealer from all but one of the racks in the county.

“Someone didn’t like this edition of the (Plaindealer,)” Wiggins wrote on X Thursday. “Guess which article. So they stole nearly every newspaper out of our racks in Ouray County. If you hoped to silence or intimidate us, you failed miserably.”

Gabriel Trujillo, 20, Ashton Whittington, 18, and a third man were arrested on suspicion of sexual assault, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

The agency did not name the third man because he was a juvenile at the time of the incident. Trujillo was 19 at the time of the assault.

According to the Plaindealer, the girl told investigators she was raped at least three times after passing out at the party. She screamed and fought back while people, including Wood, were asleep in the home.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door during one of the assaults, the girl told investigators, causing one of the suspects to restrain her and try to cover her mouth.

Evidence collected through a sexual assault examination matched Trujillo and the third suspect, according to the Plaindealer.

Arrest warrants in the case were sealed, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, but McIntyre obtained a heavily redacted copy by filing a request with the court clerk and asking the district attorney’s office to file a motion to unseal the affidavit.

All three suspects have posted bail and been released from jail, according to the Plaindealer.

McIntyre and Wiggins reported the theft to the Ouray Police Department on Thursday, which immediately referred the case to the Ouray County Sheriff’s Office to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, McIntyre said.

“We’re confident law enforcement will figure out who did this and we do plan to press charges,” she said.

Investigators identified a suspect in the theft through surveillance video from local businesses and expect them to turn themselves in shortly, McIntyre said. She declined to name the suspect because of the open investigation but confirmed the person is not believed to be connected to the Ouray Police Department or any of the sexual assault suspects.

The suspect also returned a garbage bag full of stolen newspapers to the Plaindealer’s office on Thursday night, McIntyre said.

In the hours after they found out about the thefts, McIntyre and Wiggins decided to try to get a second run of the weekly newspaper printed.

Their usual printer, the Montrose Daily Press, was able to squeeze them in, McIntyre said, and the co-publishers restocked the racks on Friday morning to cheers from passing readers, including a city council member.

This is not the first time McIntyre and Wiggins have sparked ire with their coverage since purchasing the paper in 2019 – McIntyre’s reporting on former Sheriff Lance FitzGerald’s drunken driving arrest led to a recall election and his ouster in 2020 – but they never anticipated someone going to such lengths to prevent a story from being read.

“It is our job to shine a light on the icky, dark corners, even in small communities who think these things don’t happen here,” she said. “The only way to address these issues is to shine a light on them, no matter how hard it is and no matter how much people aren’t going to like it.”

McIntyre said she came to terms with the fact that at least one person will be angry with her when the paper is published on Thursday in the first year of owning the Plaindealer.

“You can be mad at me, but you can’t prevent others from reading the truth,” she said.

This also isn’t the first time someone has tried to stymie local news coverage in Colorado by stealing newspapers, said Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition Executive Director Jeff Roberts.

In 2019, someone stole 1,000 copies of Colorado State University’s Rocky Mountain Collegian when the newspaper covered campaign finance violations in student elections.

“Maybe this would have worked to stifle a story a few decades ago, but it doesn’t work to stifle a story now in the age of internet and social media,” Roberts said.

News of the theft quickly spread on social media, earning hundreds of shares on X from journalists across the country. McIntyre said she’s heard from national reporters at CBS and HuffPost who want to cover the story, too.

“When something like this happens it has the sort of bizarre effect of focusing the attention on the importance of local news,” Roberts said. “… To me, it says, this is another reason why local journalism is so vital because otherwise people don’t know about things like this.”

But it may be the first time someone can be prosecuted under a state law that makes it a civil offense to interfere with the lawful distribution of newspapers, according to Roberts.

McIntyre said she’s not sure whether the Plaindealer will go that route – the level of attention they’ve received since Thursday morning is already overwhelming, she said.

“… I think it’s important to make time to explain why this is so egregious,” she said. “This is not just an attack on a small paper, this is an attack on freedom of information and ultimately our ability to be informed and part of a democracy.”

McIntyre and Wiggins are also overwhelmed by the amount of support they’ve received so far, including more than $2,000 in donations through Report for America, which helps fund their sole reporter on staff.

“I hope this sends a message to the newspaper thief that you can’t do this to small papers,” she said. “… We’re not going to stand for this, and the community isn’t going to either.”