Updated August 21, 2025 09:48PM
A Park Ranger’s Stabbing Sparked a Manhunt. Now, Police Say it Was a Hoax.
Prosecutors in Colorado claim that a state park ranger searched for information about abdominal anatomy and injury payouts online before stabbing himself and trying to pass it off as an attack.
Staunton State Park in Colorado (Photo: Kathleen Lockhart / iStock via Getty)
On the morning of August 19, Callum Heskett, a ranger at Colorado’s Staunton State Park, radioed for help, saying that a man had stabbed him while he was on patrol. When deputies reached the scene, they found Heskett bleeding, a pocketknife still stuck in his torso. The suspect, who Heskett described in detail, was nowhere to be seen.
Now, authorities say the seasonal ranger’s stabbing was an elaborate hoax. On August 21, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) said it had arrested Heskett. The ranger faces felony charges of attempting to influence a public servant and tampering with evidence, plus misdemeanor charges of false reporting to authorities, reckless endangerment, and obstructing government operations, and a charge of second-degree official misconduct, a petty offense.
Jacki Kelley, a spokesperson for the JCSO, said that law enforcement became wary when the evidence officers collected didn’t match what they would have expected to find at the scene of a stabbing like the one Heskett reported. After interviewing Heskett and noting discrepancies in his story, investigators came to the conclusion that the ranger had lied.
“With the account that he provided to us, there were just a lot of inconsistencies with the evidence that should be associated with a crime like this, that did not exist,” said Kelley. She added that forensic investigators are still analyzing Heskett’s phone, as of August 21.
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Heskett, who holds a state law enforcement certification, previously worked as a police officer in Lafayette, Colorado from 2023 to 2024. According to an affidavit viewed by the Denver Post, before the supposed attack, Heskett searched “how deep are arteries in lower abdomen” and viewed a page on Reddit titled “$1mil for each time you get stabbed.”
At the time of the stabbing, the JCSO said it believed it was a “targeted attack,” and urged the public to be on the lookout for a white male in his early 30s, describing him as 6 feet tall and 200 pounds, dressed in a gray shirt and blue jeans. The incident sparked a daylong manhunt that closed Staunton for several hours, put nearby schools on lockout status, and resulted in police questioning and releasing at least two people. The search involved nearly 200 state and local law enforcement personnel, including SWAT teams and air assets.
“To find out that it was an absolute hoax was very frustrating,” Kelley said. “Very frustrating to a community that was asked to lock down, to bring their dogs and their children inside, frustrating to a community that could not get home because they couldn’t get in through a roadblock, frustrating to children who were locked down in school. This hoax affected so many people without any thought to what that would look like.”
Heskett remains at the hospital in what Kelley described as “good condition.” The sheriff’s office said that it planned to transfer him to the Jefferson County Jail upon his release.
Located southwest of Denver in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Staunton is one of the newest state parks in Colorado. It features some 30 miles of trail, sport and traditional climbing, and campgrounds.
