More than four years after a Colorado Springs man reported that a Tinder date restrained, cut, and choked him inside her apartment, the woman charged in the case is headed toward a jury trial.
Lauren Dooley pleaded not guilty at an Oct. 1 hearing before 4th Judicial District Judge Eric Bentley. Her trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 22, 2027, The Gazette reported. She posted bond soon after her Sept. 28, 2022, arrest and attended the recent hearing virtually.
Several jury trials have been scheduled and then removed from the docket during the years since. Dooley was 22 when she was arrested in the case.
The pending charges include second-degree kidnapping, second-degree assault, menacing, and false imprisonment, according to KRDO’s October update.
Inside the Apartment
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In his account to Colorado Springs police, documented in the arrest affidavit, the 21-year-old man said he had just met Dooley on Tinder and agreed to visit her apartment on East Cache La Poudre Street. They talked on the couch, and she undressed him and performed oral sex before binding his wrists and ankles with duct tape.
He consented to the restraints, but when she produced a kitchen knife and demanded that he enter her bedroom, he no longer consented to staying. Fearing she would hurt him, he got into her bed.
The man said Dooley climbed on top of him and cut his left shoulder, then pressed both hands against his throat for approximately 20 seconds, making it difficult to breathe. She tightened a belt around his neck for another 20 seconds before removing it and checking his neck for a pulse.
Upset that he was bleeding on her bed, she directed him into the bathtub. When a DoorDash delivery arrived, he said she warned him, “If you scream or say anything, I’ll kill you.”
After eating, Dooley returned to bed with him and pulled a blanket over him. He noticed the knife under the blanket near his feet and, once she fell asleep, retrieved it and cut himself free of some of the duct tape.
While trying to collect his keys and phone, he bumped into a table and woke her. He ran into the parking lot for help.
Outside the Door
Officers responded around 5:43 p.m. to an open-line 911 call. A call-taker had heard a man saying he was bleeding all over the bed, along with “because you cut me” and “you’re going to kill me.”
Residents directed the officers to a naked man in the parking lot. He appeared to be bleeding from a cut on his left arm and was backing away from Dooley, who had what appeared to be blood smeared on her arms and hands. He exclaimed that she had tied him up and cut him.
During a sweep of the apartment to check whether anyone else needed medical assistance, officers observed a kitchen knife near the bed, blood-soaked rags, and blood throughout the bathtub.
A Longer Wait
At the October hearing, Dooley’s attorney, Eric S. Anaya, told The Gazette that the length of the case was not too unusual.
“There were delays in evaluations and delays in filings, and it just … some of these cases take that time,” he said.
All parties are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.