{"id":178205,"date":"2026-03-04T19:48:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T19:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/178205\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T19:48:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T19:48:06","slug":"former-colorado-doctor-wanted-on-sex-assault-charge-injured-in-florida-shootout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/178205\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Colorado doctor wanted on sex assault charge injured in Florida shootout"},"content":{"rendered":"

A warrant was issued for 72-year-old Thomas Steffens in connection with a January sex assault in Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

VERO BEACH, Florida \u2014 A former Colorado neurosurgeon wanted on sexual assault charges was shot and wounded but is in custody following a shootout with law enforcement near Vero Beach, Florida earlier this week.<\/p>\n

According to Grand Junction Police<\/a>, officers responded to a reported sexual assault on Jan. 28. Their investigation found that the victim was sexually assaulted after possibly being drugged. Thomas Steffens, 72, was identified as a suspect and a warrant was issued for his arrest, police said.<\/p>\n

On Monday, members of a United States Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force received information that Steffens was traveling by bus to the Treasure Coast of Florida. They were also told that he had made statements indicating that he would not be taken into custody alive.<\/p>\n

According to the Indian River County Sheriff\u2019s Office<\/a>, task force members later located a vehicle Steffens was in and attempted a traffic stop. Steffens, who was in the passenger seat, refused to comply with commands to exit the vehicle and then shot at the five members of the task force, the sheriff’s office said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Task force members returned fire, striking Steffens multiple times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“When we finally did take him into custody, he was still defiant. He was still raising his middle finger at our deputies. He was still actively working against us, even though he had been shot four times,”\u00a0Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers told NBC affiliate WPTV.<\/a><\/p>\n

He is expected to survive, according to the sheriff’s office. During the exchange of gunfire, a U.S. Marshal was shot in the leg. He was treated for his injury and released from the hospital.<\/p>\n

Detectives with the Indian River County Sheriff\u2019s Office and the Martin County Sheriff\u2019s Office who were assigned to the task force were involved in the shooting, which remains under investigation. None of them were injured.<\/p>\n

In addition to the sexual assault charges in Colorado, Steffens now faces charges of attempted murder related to the shooting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

State records show that Steffens still has an active medical license in Colorado, but it’s listed as “restricted.” In September, the state reached a mutual agreement that Steffens would stop practicing medicine. \u00a0<\/p>\n

That followed a prior restriction from March of last year where Steffens agreed to stop prescribing any controlled substances. The agreement between Steffens and the state also indicates there were concerns that Steffens might have a physical or mental condition or illness that made it unsafe for him to practice medicine “with reasonable skill and safety to patients.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A warrant was issued for 72-year-old Thomas Steffens in connection with a January sex assault in Grand Junction.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-178205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}