Suspect arrested after breaking into Colorado Supreme Court building

A man was arrested on Tuesday after police said he broke into the Colorado Supreme Court building in Denver with a handgun and set a fire in a stairwell.

Police arrested Brandon Olsen, 44, on charges of arson, robbery and burglary, saying he had fled the scene of a car crash shortly after 1 a.m. before shooting out a window of the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center in downtown Denver and breaking in.

Police say Olsen took keys from an unarmed security guard and made his way up the building’s seventh floor, where he fired shots out of windows and lit a fire in a stairwell that was soon extinguished by the sprinkler system.

Olsen surrendered to police without incident at about 3 a.m., the Denver Police Department said in a statement. It was not clear whether Olsen was represented by a lawyer.

The motive for the break-in was unclear, and police redacted the portions of a police report recounting an interview Olsen gave to investigators after his arrest.

The Colorado Supreme Court has been the center of a legal battle which has garnered national attention after it disqualified former President Donald Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

The court ruled that Trump was barred by a U.S. constitutional provision that prohibits anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office. Last week, the Colorado Republican Party asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the case.

Authorities have said nothing about any possible connection between the break-in and the Trump case.

No one was hurt during the incident, Denver 7 reported.