Just what does it take to keep a violent career criminal behind bars — and the public out of harm’s way — in the state of Colorado?

Apparently, Walter Huling’s dozen-year record of violent and other serious crimes, including parole violations, wasn’t enough. 

Not enough to keep him from being paroled again. Nor to keep him from carjacking a woman in an Aurora parking garage last week; driving her vehicle on a rampage, and colliding with a another car — killing its driver and three of five children on board. 

According to authorities, Huling was killed, too, when he was ejected from the car he had stolen and rolled into the path of the vehicle bearing his victims. That brought the death toll to five. The two other children in the car hit by Huling remained in the hospital as of Friday.

As The Gazette reported on Wednesday, authorities say the tragedy began Monday afternoon, when the 31-year-old Huling carjacked a Toyota Matrix hatchback at Aurora’s Nine Mile Station Regional Transportation District parking garage. The vehicle’s owner told Aurora police she was getting into her Toyota when a man later identified as Huling approached and asked her for a ride. When she refused, he pulled her from the driver’s seat and drove off.

Less than an hour later and 21 miles away in Douglas County, Huling lost control of the car on Colorado 83 near Russellville Road south of Franktown, crashing into a Ford Fusion sedan head-on. Its driver Alvin Corado, 35, Toretto Corado, 8, MaKenlee Corado, 11, and Jase Green, 12, all of Colorado Springs, lost their lives.

The other shoe dropped as news emerged later in the week that Huling was out on parole and had a record that rendered him a menace to society. A report by Denver’s Channel 7 News revealed Huling, “had a long criminal history, including two stints in prison at the Colorado Department of Corrections.”

That record includes an arrest on assault charges in 2013 at age 18 and 15 arrests over the following six years on wide-ranging charges — among them bribery, burglary, driving under the influence, parole violations and multiple assaults, according to the Channel 7 report. In 2019, Huling was sentenced to six years in prison following an assault in downtown Denver in which he knocked a man unconscious and assaulted the man’s wife. He was also charged with assaulting the police officer who arrested him, Channel 7 reported.

None of which evidently prevented his release on parole.

It’s just the latest illustration — tragic, depressing and alarming — of Colorado’s failing criminal justice system. In recent years, The Gazette has reported on a procession of parolees as well as criminal suspects released on recognizance bonds pending court proceedings, who have committed horrible crimes while free on the streets. 

Blame a legislature bent on “justice reform” and a pliant governor willing to sign into law bills that essentially decriminalized crime with easier pre-trial release, downgraded criminal penalties and more lenient parole. Alongside those lapses by lawmakers are plenty of judges and even some prosecutors who have decided to go soft on offenders at the expense of the law-abiding public. 

Why, pray tell, wasn’t Huling still in prison? 

The crash he caused was in the jurisdiction of 23rd Judicial District Attorney (and Gazette columnist) George Brauchler, who summed it up aptly for Channel 7: “This guy’s criminal history, and the fact that he appears to have been on parole — and this happened — seems like we are failing the community.” To say the least.