EATON — The Eaton man accused of driving his SUV into a group of Back the Blue rally attendees has a history of protesting and contempt for both President Trump and his supporters, as well as law enforcement according to his social media profile.
Isaiah Cordova, 21 of Eaton, was arrested Saturday afternoon on seven counts of first-degree assault, seven counts of felony menacing, and one count of reckless driving. The life-long Eaton Resident graduated from Eaton High School in 2017, and at one point was studying to be a journalist, even submitting an opinion piece to Red Ink, the Eaton High School paper just days after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016.
“On the night of Nov. 8, I was out electioneering at the polling place at the Evangelical Free Church in Eaton holding a sign which read “NEVER TRUMP. In the four hours I was there, I met plenty of people. Most of them were polite and held good conversations with me. One woman even asked if she could have one of my other signs for a Clinton watch-party she was going to,” the then high school senior wrote, continuing:
“The people who stick in my mind, however, are those who could not bear to talk to me face-to-face and had to shout at me from across the parking lot. ‘We’re gonna build that wall,’ one man shouted at me.
‘Trump’s gonna make America great again,’ another yelled from his truck window. One man flung a lit cigarette at me. Several more gave me the middle finger as they made the turn into the church parking lot.”
Cordova is out on bond and is due back in court at 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 5 to hear formal charges against him.
Former Eaton Mayor and current Weld County Commissioner Kevin Ross, who was out of town during the event, said after talking to those at the event the fact everyone is safe is amazing.
Ross said not only did Cordova, who drove down into the park, narrowly miss a young mother and her children who were just one-minute earlier rolling down the grass, but also a family of 11 from Fort Lupton and a dozens of other rally attendees who scrambled for their lives. Ross added that the numerous people in attendance who were armed and drew their weapons but had the restraint not to fire, and the police officers with their quick reaction to apprehend Cordova, were all phenomenal.
“It is an absolute miracle that no one was hurt,” Ross said. “It goes to show the sheer connection everyone in this community has for each other and their commitment to protect one another.
Public posts on Cordova’s Facebook page date back to his high school years as to when Cordova began protesting and making his views known.
In August 2017 he posted about the very same type of action he took on Saturday, calling it “terrorism.”
And he accused police of defending white nationalists.
“By the time 2020 rolls around, event he people who voted for Trump will have turned against him,” Cordova wrote in his high school editorial. “But this doesn’t excuse his supporters. They have allowed a prejudiced xenophobe into the highest office in the nation … The responsibility for such an abhorrent excuse of a person landing in the highest office in America falls squarely on both parties’ shoulders. The Republicans’ consistent fear of progress and actually catching up to the rest of the world in quality-of-life has caused them to elect a bigot, and the Democrats’ Clinton dynasty has caused for the progression of something which was completely preventable: the ruination of America through incompetence, scandal, and weakness.”
Tonya Van Beber, who has lived in Eaton her entire life was at the event and knows both the mother of the young woman whose children were nearly hit and the family of Cordova. Van Beber, an educator, sits on the Weld County Council and is running for the open House District 48 seat, said she is sick about what happened in her community over the weekend.
Van Beber said the beauty of America is the social contract by which we live. If we lose that commitment for caring for each other, then we are eroding the very foundation of what it means to be a community that lives by the rule of law, according to Van Beber.
“It’s very shocking. It was something I had to process that this is something that can happen right in our small, tiny little community,” she said. “It has become very real, the idea that violence can come right to your doorstep in the blink of an eye. That to me is very disturbing.
“It’s upsetting. This is a community of individuals that I have known my whole life, and my heart goes out to the people that were threatened, that had to run for their lives. These kinds of events are unfolding faster than we can keep up with and that makes it even more disturbing. My heart hurts for my community, and my heart hurts for the family of the young man that did this because at the end of the day, they’ve also lived here for a lifetime, and I’m sure it’s shocking and upsetting to them as well.”
