Colorado News Collaborative: The dramatic transformation from journalists on the job into witnesses for the police in a broad-daylight fatal shooting at a downtown Denver protest took only moments.

But that’s what happened last weekend when employees for two local news outlets with the largest online audiences in Colorado found themselves at the center of a deadly news story.

The harrowing scene unfolded Oct. 10 outside Denver’s Art Museum as people clashed during a political rally that left a 49-year-old hat-maker and “Patriot Muster” attendee named Lee Keltner dead. In jail and facing a murder charge is 30-year-old Matthew Dolloff, a private security guard hired by KUSA 9News to protect one of the station’s journalists at the rally. A Denver Post photographer nearby captured astonishing images of the shooting, and a producer for 9News, who Dolloff was accompanying, caught part of the incident on cellphone video. Both journalists wound up in police questioning.

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