On April 15, 2017, deputies responding to a welfare check at a home on Divide View Drive in Coal Creek Canyon found three people shot to death. One victim was 39-year-old Emory Leroy Fraker of Broomfield; the other two were Fraker’s half-brother, 54-year-old Wallace Lance White, and Wallace’s 56-year-old wife, Kelly Sloat-White, who lived at the Golden-area residence. Family said Fraker had been staying with the Whites to help care for them because of health issues.

Investigators reported the house had been specifically targeted and ruled out murder-suicide. Authorities noted a significant amount of marijuana and cash in the home, and said those items could be tied to motive. Attention focused on 24-year-old Garrett Matthew Coughlin of Lakewood, an acquaintance of the victims; investigators said he was late for work the day of the killings, was seen with packaged marijuana and cash days later, and left a firearm with a cousin that matched a slug from a victim in ballistics testing. Coughlin was arrested on May 16, 2017, and charged with three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of first-degree murder during the commission of a robbery, and aggravated robbery.