Defendant in Aurora Councilwoman's Domestic-Abuse Case Set Free on Plea Deal

The defendant in a domestic-abuse case involving Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky agreed on Monday, September 23, to serve 160 days in jail for obstruction of the use of a telephone and was set free with credit for time served, according to a plea agreement.

In April, Jurinsky shared on X that she'd been the victim of domestic violence over the weekend of April 13. Derek Cobb, the defendant in the case, was originally charged in Arapahoe County District Court with second-degree kidnapping, third-degree assault and criminal mischief.

"Over the weekend, I was involved in a domestic incident. While this is a very personal matter, I also understand that I'm a public official, and incidents like this can become news," Jurinsky wrote in an April 19 post on X. "Needless to say, this attack has traumatized me in ways I never knew were possible."

The kidnapping charge was the only felony Cobb was facing, but that charge was dropped in May. In exchange for his pleading guilty to telephone obstruction, the office of the 18th Judicial District Attorney dropped the remaining charges on Monday for assault and criminal mischief. According to the plea agreement, the victim, Jurinsky, supports the deal.

The plea agreement comes two weeks after Aurora City Council finalized a vote to move all domestic-violence cases out of municipal courts and into county courts. Jurinsky, who is the chair of the council Public Safety Committee, spearheaded that effort and first proposed it in March, before her own domestic-violence incident took place.

During a May 6 Aurora City Council meeting, without going into detail, Jurinsky called out five Aurora Police officers, including former interim police chief Heather Morris, for mishandling her case. She asked for all five as well as City Manager Jason Batchelor to resign for "incompetence," and threatened that "a lawsuit is coming."

"The incompetence of leadership in the Aurora Police Department has now caught my attention, and it's caught my attention in a big way," she said at the meeting. "Not only is it complaints about how criminals are treated in this city, it is also victims, how victims are treated in this city. These five officers do not belong in this department."

Jurinsky has yet to file the lawsuit she cited, but Morris, who announced in June that she did not intend to pursue the role permanently, gave way to Todd Chamberlain a couple of weeks ago. Chamberlain was the first hire to fill the position permanently in two years.

Since she was elected in 2021, Jurinsky has become the most high-profile member of Aurora City Council, especially in the last couple of months. After a landlord said in early August that his apartment complex had been taken over by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, she's been on local and national TV claiming that the city has a Venezuelan gang problem, and is even scheduled to appear on Dr. Phil Primetime to talk about it.

She's also known for her tough-on-crime approach, passing laws to send shoplifters to jail and boost the Aurora police reserves. Even after she denounced five officers who worked on her domestic-violence case, she said, "To the rank and file of the Aurora Police Department, I stand with you, and I will always stand with you."

Around the same time that the felony kidnapping charge was dropped against Cobb in May, an Arapahoe County social worker, Robin Niceta, was sent to prison for four years for accusing Jurinsky of abusing her own child. Niceta is the ex-girlfriend of former Aurora police chief Vanessa Wilson.

A few months into her term as councilwoman, Jurinsky called Wilson "trash" during a radio interview. Niceta, who was dating Wilson at the time, retaliated by trying to anonymously report Jurinsky for child abuse.