Congresswoman Lauren Boebert told a dramatic story this week on the House floor, saying that she began carrying a gun after a man was murdered outside her Colorado restaurant.
Except: The man died of an overdose. He was a block away from the restaurant. And the whole story had been debunked last year by a Colorado newspaper.
The freshman Republican’s statement during a debate Wednesday over background checks launched a flurry of follow-up by national news outlets including the Washington Post.
They found what the Colorado Sun had reported last year: The 2013 death of Tony Green did not occur as Boebert has frequently recounted it, as a man “beaten to death” outside her restaurant.
According to records from police in the town of Rifle, Green was found unconscious on a sidewalk early one morning, shortly after he had fled an altercation at a gas station. He had a facial cut and scrapes consistent with a fall. Emergency responders could not revive him and he was pronounced dead at a hospital.
An autopsy report noted high levels of methamphetamine, alcohol and other drugs in his system, and it determined the death was the result of the drug use rather than any injury caused by a fight.
A preliminary investigation into the death as a possible homicide was abandoned once the toxicology report came out. The other man involved in the fight was never arrested; witnesses confirmed he had lost his prosthetic leg in the scuffle and remained at the gas station once Green ran off.
The place where Green collapsed was around a corner and about 100 yards from Shooters Grill, Boebert’s restaurant.
Boebert said it was for self-protection that she openly carried a firearm while she was working and encouraged the restaurant’s servers — most of them young women — to do the same.
As of Thursday, Boebert’s office had not issued any statement about the discrepancies.