Armed with nothing more than notecards held in shaking hands and a box of tissues on the courtroom podium, Christian Glass’ family stood before a Clear Creek County judge and pleaded for the deputy who killed the 22-year-old to receive the maximum sentence.

“You going to prison isn’t going to make you a decent person, you going to prison isn’t going to bring back our son,” said Sally Glass, Christian’s mother, addressing the table where former Clear Creek County sheriff’s deputy Andrew Buen sat. “…But you’ve done so much damage, and you must not be able to get away with it.”

Sally Glass choked on her words throughout her speech to the judge during the Monday morning sentencing hearing, fighting back tears. At times, she stopped speaking completely to breathe deeply and compose herself, allowing silence to fill the courtroom.

Buen faced up to three years in prison after he was convicted in February of criminally negligent homicide in the 2022 killing of Christian Glass. He was also convicted of reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor typically punished by no more than 120 days in jail, in an initial jury trial that ended with the jury deadlocked on a murder charge.

During the Monday morning hearing, Clear Creek County District Court Judge Catherine Cheroutes granted Buen the maximum possible sentence: three years in the Colorado Department of Corrections for the homicide charge and 120 days in jail for the reckless endangerment charge. The sentences will be served concurrently.

“Mr. Buen killed Christian Glass, and that deserves punishment,” Cheroutes said. “There’s no question in my mind that that is appropriate. … This was about power. This wasn’t a mistake.”

Cheroutes said the sentence needed to address “the needs of the victims and the community” while also serving as an example and promoting respect for the law.

Still, the maximum sentence doesn’t feel like enough and pales in comparison to the years Buen stole from his 22-year-old son, Christian’s father, Simon Glass, said.

“What a waste, what a terrible waste,” Simon Glass said.

He said the family is still struggling to come to terms with his son’s death and that talking about his son in the past tense feels “completely alien, like someone else is speaking.”

Simon Glass also struggled to complete his testimony before Cheroutes during the sentencing hearing. He said all of his once-happy memories of his son had been infused with pain — not just from the shooting, but from the drawn-out legal process and multiple trials.

“This entire trial has been incredibly difficult for all of us,” said Katie Glass, Christian’s sister. “I am not the same person I was before. I have anxiety attacks, I have depression, I can’t live my life like I used to be able to. And I just miss him.”

Buen shot and killed Christian Glass on June 10, 2022, after the 22-year-old called 911 for help when his car got stuck on a rock in Clear Creek County near Silver Plume, small town along Interstate 70 west of Denver. Glass, who had marijuana and amphetamine in his system, was experiencing a mental health crisis and told dispatchers he was afraid of “skinwalkers” and people chasing him.

“He died terrified, in pain and all alone,” Katie Glass said. “That’s what hurts me the most.”

Seven law enforcement officers responded to Glass’ 911 call and spent more than an hour trying to coax Glass out of the car while he was experiencing delusions and paranoia. Eventually, Buen decided to break Glass’ window and pull him from the vehicle.

When officers broke the window, Glass grabbed a knife and officers fired a Taser at him and shot him with beanbags in an attempt to force him to drop it. Instead, Glass twisted in the driver’s seat and thrust the knife toward an officer standing next to the shattered window behind him, prompting Buen to shoot Glass five times. Glass then stabbed himself several times.

A separate grand jury investigation into the incident in 2022 found Glass committed no crime, acted in panic and self-defense before he was killed and never actually came close to stabbing the officers. The involved law enforcement agencies agreed to a $19 million settlement with Glass’ parents in May.

Buen was fired after he was indicted.

“Christian deserved better, you all deserved better,” Buen said during the sentencing hearing, standing before the court in his orange prison jumpsuit. “This is something I have to live with.”

He said there were a million things he could have done better that night and he wishes that he had done differently.

Simon Glass called out the grief displayed by Buen, his attorney and his supporters as performative and said the former deputy has continually shown “a complete lack of remorse throughout the trial.” Buen and his attorney insisted the regret was genuine.

He said every time he speaks with his family, they talk about their favorite memories and time together.

“I can’t imagine sharing those moments and having the person that they’re about be gone,” Buen said.

Buen’s sister, Jennifer, said she’s had to deal with the “unbearable pain of watching your brother slip away.”

She and her daughter, Abigail, told the judge that Andrew Buen changed after the 2022 shooting. They said he was “beyond broken and hurt” and became distanced.

Buen’s mother and close friends also testified on behalf of the ex-deputy, asking the court for “mercy.”

Judge Cheroutes said she truly believed the group’s statements about Buen, that he is a kind, gentle and loyal person, but she said that all changed once in uniform and armed.

She said law enforcement officers need to remember that they are public servants and “their duty” is to not violate their oath to serve and protect.

“And that is exactly what happened in this case,” she said.

Andrew Buen’s supervisor, former Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kyle Gould, was not there during the incident but gave Buen permission to break into Glass’s car. Gould pleaded guilty to failing to intervene in the excessive force of another officer in 2023 and was sentenced to two years of probation.

An additional four law enforcement officers face charges of failing to intervene in the excessive force of another officer; their criminal cases are pending.

By CORA LEWIS

NEW YORK (AP) — If your life has been upended by a wildfire, hurricane, flood, tornado, or another disaster this past year, the IRS recognizes that you may need more time to file your taxes and grants you an automatic extension beyond the normal filing deadline, which is Tuesday.

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You’re also permitted to write off a certain amount of loss due to disaster, reducing your tax burden. That could be damaged property, lost income, or small business losses.

“It can feel really daunting and overwhelming, after you’ve already lost your home or your vehicle, to tackle that project (of loss write-off). It can take time and a lot of energy,” said Alison Flores, manager at the Tax Institute for H&R Block. “We see people be hesitant to tackle that, and so they leave that loss on the table.”

In the wake of a disaster, people are also more vulnerable to scams, so be extra vigilant as you prepare your taxes, even with the extra time of an IRS extension.

“Scammers often pose as representatives of the IRS or FEMA to exploit victims of disasters,” said Misty Erickson, tax content program manager at the National Association of Tax Professionals. “Common scams include false promises of tax refunds, fake charities soliciting donations, and phishing attempts requesting personal or financial information.”

Here’s what you should know:

First, determine whether your area is a federally declared disaster site

The IRS keeps an official list online of all disaster locations that qualify you for an extension to file.

For the past year, individuals and businesses affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton qualify for tax relief, as well as disaster victims in parts of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Mexico, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Alaska.

FILE – Ohio River floods Strader Avenue, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Taxpayers in these areas have until May 1 to file returns and make payments, and there’s no need to do any additional paperwork to receive that extra two week grace period. Filers also have the option to request additional extensions to October 15, but interest will accrue if any money due isn’t paid by May 1.

Individuals and businesses in southern California affected by wildfires and straight-line winds also qualify for automatic extensions due to disaster. Taxpayers in the relevant counties have until Oct. 15 to file returns and make payments.

Any interest or fees that normally accrue on late payments won’t accrue during disaster extensions. Most direct disaster relief is also not counted as income, and so is not taxed.

Remember that simple steps in the immediate aftermath can make a difference

While nothing is easy in the first days and weeks following a disaster, a few choices can help when seeking insurance reimbursement and at tax time.

“We recommend saving media coverage,” said Flores. “If your neighborhood was on the news showing the disaster, write down what date that was or record that copy. Anything that substantiates your losses and what condition your property was in is helpful.”

According to the IRS, other steps include:

— Taking photographs of damaged property or belongings to document and calculate the amount of your loss.

— Keeping receipts for associated expenses, including contracted work on property damaged by disaster.

— Keeping records of the original value of any property, including a home, car, jewelry, or big credit card purchases.

Filing your insurance claims as soon as possible is also important, as you deduct any insurance reimbursement from disaster losses claimed on your tax return.

Next, determine whether you qualify for tax deductions

“When we look at a loss, it’s often damage to your home, furnishings inside your home, vehicles, that kind of thing,” Flores said. “Most of the time, people will have home insurance and auto insurance, and file claims. That’s the first step. The tax deduction is for loss that’s not paid for or reimbursed by your insurance.”

The IRS calls this kind of disaster relief “casualty loss.” Claiming casualty loss doesn’t result in dollar-for-dollar reimbursement, but it does lower your tax burden, which can mean more cash to help pay for recovery.

Form 4684, which you include when you file your return, walks you through the relevant steps for calculating your casualty write-off.

Victims of disasters may deduct their losses in either the year they suffered the loss or in the previous year — in that case, by filing an amended return.

Watch out for scams

In the wake of a disaster, it’s normal to feel vulnerable and to listen to voices that promise relief. But scammers often target disaster victims for exactly this reason.

“Taxpayers should be cautious of unsolicited phone calls, emails or texts claiming to be from the IRS or relief agencies,” said Erickson. “The IRS never initiates contact via email, text, or social media to request sensitive information. When in doubt, taxpayers should verify correspondence by calling official numbers directly.”

According to the IRS, you should watch out for:

— Big paydays: The promise of more money than you think sounds reasonable. Bad advisers may make outlandish statements about available credits.

— Threats and demands: Any pressure to pay for tax help “now or else,” mentions of arrest or deportation, or refusals to let you question or appeal the taxes they say you owe.

— Suspicious or misspelled website links that aren’t IRS.gov.

Scammers may say that they want to “help” you file casualty loss claims or to get big refunds. Always rely on official IRS government websites and beware fishy offers of help with high price-tags or sensational promises.

The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

For many tax filers, state and federal income taxes are due Tuesday.

If you are done working on your 2024 taxes, congratulations.

If you have not, the last-minute tax filing tips below, from one San Diego finance professional and the Internal Revenue Service, could make the coming days a little bit less of a drag.

Insights from a finance pro

Levi Anderson, a financial planning manager with the San Diego office EP Wealth Advisors, a fee-only, fiduciary firm, shared some insights and reminders for anyone still working on their taxes, whether alone or with a tax professional.

If you’re filing an extension, you still have to pay your tax balance by Tuesday’s tax deadline, Anderson said. “If you are filing an extension, be aware that taxes are due on the original tax deadline although you are filing an extension,” he said. “Although the penalty for ‘Failure-to-Pay’ is less than the ‘Failure-to-File’ penalty, the penalty and interest can add up if you wait until later to pay your taxes you owe.”
It’s not too late to contribute to your 2024 retirement accounts — even though we are four months into 2025. Those contributions could reduce your taxable income. “Making a last-minute contribution to these accounts still can count for the 2024 tax year until April 15th. Just be sure you note it as a 2024 contribution when you make it,” Anderson said.

IRS resources for last-minute filers

For last-minute filers looking for free filing resources, qualified taxpayers can still use IRS Direct File and IRS Free File. “Additionally, anyone can use IRS Free File to submit an extension of time to file regardless of their income,” the agency says on its website. Link: irs.gov/filing/file-an-extension-through-irs-free-file

The IRS has a searchable FAQ page with links to almost 60 questions and answers, including “Should I file an amended return?” and “How do I correct an excess salary deferral to my 401(k)?” and a series of questions about payments and distributions dubbed “Is it taxable?” Link: irs.gov/help/ita

A free tax preparation program in Orange County (SCNG)

The IRS’s last-minute tips page also has information for people who are eligible for automatic extensions and who have trouble paying their tax bills. Link: irs.gov/newsroom/last-minute-filing-tips-resources-available-to-help-taxpayers-who-still-need-to-file

Avoiding errors

The IRS also shared pointers to minimize the chance that your return will have an error.

Triple check that your filing status, names, Social Security numbers and birthdates are correct. Same goes for bank account and routing numbers, for a refund via direct deposit.
Answer the digital asset question on Form 1040 and several other forms: “At any time during the tax year, did you: (a) receive (as a reward, award or payment for property or services); or (b) sell, exchange, or otherwise dispose of a digital asset (or a financial interest in a digital asset)?” Examples of digital assets include convertible virtual currencies and cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Income from these assets is taxable.
The agency also recommends using electronic filing over paper filing, as a tool to boost accuracy. “Electronic filing decreases mathematical errors … and prompts taxpayers for missing information. Opting for electronic filing and selecting direct deposit is the fastest and safest way to receive a refund,” the agency says.

 

Filing taxes electronically helps reduce errors and speed up refunds, the IRS says. (iStockphoto)

Planning ahead

Anderson, the San Diego finance professional, said now is a great time to start getting in shape for next year’s filing season.

“While reviewing your tax return, ask your preparer if they would recommend you consider doing something different in order to be in a better tax position next year,” he said. “While you may not be able to have a lengthy strategy session on the spot, your tax situation will be fresh in your preparer’s mind, and they may have very helpful pointers for you to consider between now and the end of the year.”

Don’t just put your tax return in a drawer, Anderson added. “The biggest issue we see is that people don’t think about taxes until this time next year. Most of the tax-savvy moves need to be done by Dec. 31.”

By JOHN LEICESTER

PARIS (AP) — After his arrest, the boy’s mother was stunned to discover that her 12-year-old had been learning how to kill and gorging on videos of decapitation and torture so gruesome they made even case-hardened French court officials look away. The mother told criminal investigators that she’d thought her son had been playing video games and doing homework during the hours he spent in his room.

The child’s descent into the internet’s darkest recesses started innocently enough, with online searches about Islam after an aunt gave him a Quran as a gift, says the boy’s lawyer. From there, more searching, automated algorithms that steer users’ online experiences and the boy’s curiosity ultimately led him to encrypted chats and ultraviolent propaganda pumped out by Islamic State militants and other extremist groups that are worming their way via apps, video gaming and social media into the minds of the very young.

Paul-Edouard Lallois, the French prosecutor who secured the boy’s conviction on two terror-related charges last August, says the thousands of images and other extreme content that the child viewed so warped his understanding of the world and of right and wrong that “it will take years and years of work to enable this kid to recover normal bearings.”

The prosecutor believes that left unstopped, the boy was on a trajectory to possibly becoming a “completely dehumanized soldier” who risked joining the ranks of digitally radicalized teenagers in France and beyond who are hatching terror plots and expressing support for extremism. The huge library of violent content, several terabytes of data, that the boy amassed included video tutorials on bomb-making, the prosecutor said.

“It is possible to completely upend the mental bearings of such a young child,” he said. “Do that for a few years and, even before he has turned 18, he’s already capable of, yes, committing an attack and the worst things with just a knife.”

An emerging global threat

Across Europe and further afield, the picture is similar: Counterterrorism agencies are grappling with a new generation of attackers, plotters and acolytes of extremism who are younger than ever and have fed on ultraviolent and potentially radicalizing content largely behind their screens. Some are appearing on police radars only when it’s already too late — with knife in hand, as they’re carrying out an attack.

Olivier Christen, France’s national anti-terrorism prosecutor who handles the country’s most serious terror investigations, has a firsthand view of the surging threat. His unit handed terror-related preliminary charges to just two minors in 2022. That number leapt to 15 in 2023 and again last year, to 19.

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Some are “really very, very young, around 15 years old, which was something that was almost unheard of no more than two years ago,” Christen said in an interview with The Associated Press. It “demonstrates the strong effectiveness of the propaganda disseminated by terrorist organizations, which are quite good at targeting this age group.”

The so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing network that usually shuns the limelight, comprising U.S., U.K., Canadian, Australian and New Zealand security agencies, is so alarmed that it took the unusual step in December of calling publicly for collective action, saying: “Radicalized minors can pose the same credible terrorist threat as adults.”

In Germany, an Interior Ministry task force launched after deadly mass stabbings last year is focusing on teenagers’ social networks, aiming to counter their growing role in radicalization. In France, the domestic DGSI security agency says 70% of suspects detained for involvement in alleged terror plots are under the age of 21.

In Austria, security services say a 19-year-old suspect arrested in August, with an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old, for an alleged ISIS-inspired plot to slaughter Taylor Swift concertgoers, was radicalized online. So, too, was a suspected ISIS supporter, aged 14, detained this February for an alleged plan to attack a Vienna train station, Austrian authorities say.

The VSSE intelligence agency in Belgium says almost a third of suspects detained there for plotting attacks from 2022 to 2024 were minors — the youngest only 13. Extremist propaganda “is just a click away for young people in search of an identity or a purpose,” it said in a report in January, with radicalization occurring at speeds that are “nothing short of meteoric.”

A path from porn to jihadi propaganda

Counterterror investigators say the online radicalization of a child can sometimes take just months. Digitally nimble, kids are adept at covering their tracks and skirting parental controls. The 12-year-old’s mother had no inkling that her boy was consulting extremist content, the family’s lawyer, Kamel Aissaoui, told The AP.

And unlike previous generations of militants who were easier for police to track and monitor because they interacted in the real world, their successors are often interacting only in digital spaces, including on encrypted chats to mask their identities and activities, investigators say.

“They live on their phones, their tablets, their computers, in contact with people they don’t know,” said a senior official from a European intelligence agency who spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity to discuss its work combatting illegal extremist activity.

Some start “to imagine who they would attack, how they would go about it, doing actual reconnaissance, hunting for a weapon, consulting tutorials on how to make explosives,” the official said.

For some kids, the process starts with violent pornography or a fascination for gory images, counterterrorism investigators say. From there, more clicks can lead to grisly murder videos from Mexican drug cartels and ultimately to jihadi decapitations, throat-slitting and torture, in videos that are sometimes slickly produced with music and are shared on chat groups.

“Often they’re heavy consumers of everything that is broadcast on the Web and especially things that are forbidden,” said Christen, the French national anti-terror prosecutor. “It’s something of a chain reaction that gets them to the ultra-violence disseminated by jihadi movements.”

Kids from all backgrounds

Aissaoui, the child’s lawyer, said the trial was so tough on the 12-year-old that the hearing had to be paused twice because he was so distraught. He says the boy isn’t violent and was simply a victim of apps and other digital tools that expose kids to extremist content.

“He was directed from site to site, and so on and so forth, until he came across things he should never have seen,” the lawyer said.

The boy is now in residential care without access to social networks, with specialized educators and regular visitation rights for his parents, the prosecutor told AP.

Counterterrorism investigators say they’re dealing with kids from an array of backgrounds. Some have behavioral difficulties and some tend to be loners whose social interactions are largely virtual, but others raise no concerns with their behavior before it draws police attention.

Police analysis of the 12-year-old boy’s computer and phone found 1,739 jihadi videos, “a phenomenal quantity of scenes of decapitation, throat-slitting, shootings,” the prosecutor said. He also had how-to videos on bomb-making and killing, including one that appeared to show the real-life death of a tied-down man being methodically chopped into pieces.

“I have seen some horrible things in my career,” he said. “But this goes beyond all comprehension.”