In September, a man pushed a trans woman to the ground in downtown Laramie. Antifascists identified him as a member of Patriot Front.
When Scott Durham pushed Ríhanna Kelver to the ground, she drew a gun in response. Kelver, a trans woman now facing two felony charges, said the encounter started with a volley of anti-queer slurs.
Colorado antifascists have identified the man who pushed a transgender woman to the ground in Laramie last September. Their reports connect him to several violent online posts and uncover evidence of a long involvement with an organized extremist group.
The September incident and the ensuing legal fallout has brought national attention to Laramie, including from most major LGBTQ+ outlets in the United States.
The confrontation took place on a Saturday night outside the Crowbar & Grille, and kicked off when the man shouted at the transgender woman from across the street. The woman, Ríhanna Kelver, alleges the man was using anti-queer slurs, though his own account to police differed.
What started as a verbal exchange escalated when the man pushed Kelver to the ground, where she pulled a gun in response. Kelver did not fire, and claims she pulled the gun in an act of self-defense.
She was arrested that night and is now facing two felony charges, including aggravated assault. If convicted, they could net her a combined 15 years in prison.
Kelver will soon be arraigned in Albany County District Court.
Ahead of the arraignment, and amid the national spotlight on Kelver’s case, a Colorado Springs Antifascist (COSA) group has identified the man who pushed her to the ground as Scott Durham, a University of Wyoming student hailing from Colorado with connections to the extremist group known as Patriot Front.
Durham has a history of posting hateful and violent content online, including posts about killing immigrants and Black people, according to evidence uncovered by COSA and other antifascists.
A member of the COSA collective identifying themself as “Sammy” answered questions for The Laramie Reporter via email.
“Fascists pose an existential risk to an equal & fair society,” Sammy writes. “Unmasking fascists disrupts their ability to organize and engage in violence. We are primarily interested in disrupting the efforts of organized fascist groups like Patriot Front who are able to grow and recruit in the shadows.”
Durham, who hails from Colorado, was not allowed to walk during his high school graduation because of his online activity, according to an interview he gave journalists in 2023. Durham enrolled at the University of Colorado Boulder, but left during his freshman year after those connections resurfaced.
He then moved to Wyoming.
A University of Wyoming spokesman confirmed Durham is now a student at UW and is enrolled to return for the fall 2026 semester.
Court testimony and records have so far partially concealed the man’s identity, referring to him as “S.D.” or “Durham.” But Kelver told The Reporter the man in the photos shared by COSA is the man who pushed her to the ground last September.
She came across the antifa investigations months ago.
“It was weird, it was this sense of relief and dread at the same time,” Kelver said. “And it’s kind of been that continuously since then.”
On the one hand, Kelver said, knowing about Durham’s history of hateful rhetoric toward marginalized communities felt like validation, proof of the character of the man who pushed her to the ground. On the other hand, she said, it only mattered to a certain extent.
Kelver said people are free to think what they want, and to voice it, even loudly. But the incident involved more than shouting.
“He didn’t just say what he wanted, he also did what he wanted, too,” Kelver said. “He physically attacked me, paired with his hateful rhetoric. Hateful rhetoric, I can deal with. I’ve dealt with that shit since I’ve come out. But he attacked me.”
Durham has not been charged in connection to the incident. He is considered the victim in the criminal case against Kelver.
Sammy said the antifascists want to see justice for Kelver, adding “Ríhanna did nothing wrong.”
An interview request sent to an email associated with Scott Durham went unanswered. Albany County Prosecuting Attorney Kurt Britzius, who will be bringing the charges against Kelver in district court, did not respond to an interview request.
Antifascists uncover racist online and IRL activity
The Colorado Springs Antifascist (COSA) group and Sunlight 161, another antifascist collective, published three successive reports detailing Durham’s white supremacist posts and connections.
Together they outline evidence gathered through open-source intelligence methods connecting Durham to various online profiles and posts, as well as photos and videos of in-person meet-ups and other activities.
Sammy said it started with a big leak that let antifascists across the country start connecting many of the individuals involved with organized fascist and white supremacist groups.
“We noticed an uptick in Patriot Front propaganda and graffiti along the Front Range in 2021,” Sammy writes. “Around that time, an antifascist infiltrated Patriot Front and leaked their private internal communications, allowing us to identify members of the Colorado chapter, including Scott Durham.”
At the time, Durham was a student at Cherokee Trail High School in Aurora.
“We have a strict rule for not unmasking minors, and mailed a letter to Scott Durham’s parents letting them know their son had fallen down the Nazi internet pipeline, and was being groomed [by] older neo-Nazis in Patriot Front,” Sammy writes. “We encouraged them to seek help from a professional deradicalization organization like Hope Not Hate, but we did not receive a response.”
Sammy and other antifascists had started linking what was in the leaks to more widely available information, such as Twitter posts from handles associated with Durham and other social media. Their initial report is thoroughly sourced with both offending material and evidence linking Durham to the accounts behind that material.
In one example, a Twitter account linked to Durham posted a selfie in which he conceals his face behind the white balaclava frequently worn by members of Patriot Front. The antifascists identified the partially visible logo on Durham’s hoodie as the logo for Cherokee Trail High’s lacrosse team. A separate photo, posted by the team’s booster club, shows Durham wearing the same hoodie.
All told, the antifascists linked nearly 30 Twitter accounts to Durham, noting he was “a prolific ban evader” who set up a new account and got connected to the same circles each time he was banned for posting hateful or violent content.
According to the investigation, Durham’s contributions ran the gamut from promoting the Great Replacement conspiracy theory to celebrating Hitler to clearly advocating for violence against Black Americans.
One post tied to Durham states: “The Jews are attempting to destroy Whites through their replacement by immigration.” Another post — published as Durham’s team was competing in the Chicago Lacrosse Cup — complains about the number of Black people in Chicago. Another post celebrating Hitler’s birthday features letter cookies spelling out “Heil Hitler.”
Other posts celebrate the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing that killed 168 people, warn that the “day of the rope” is imminent, and call for people to “hang some fucking blacks.”
Other pieces of evidence include videos of a masked man matching Durham’s appearance putting up Patriot Front flyers in public locations in Aurora.
The posts gathered by COSA and Sunlight 161 also show Durham repeatedly referenced living in Colorado, playing lacrosse, and joining Patriot Front.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Patriot Front is an extremist, white nationalist group best known for regularly spreading antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda, including flyers and posters, and for “flash demonstrations” during which dozens of members march through a city’s streets.
There is a wealth of information on the group, in part, because members are required to spread propaganda and post evidence of this in online places associated with the group.
Patriot Front was central to the planning of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina. Organized white supremacy did not begin with that rally, but the highly visible event introduced everyday Americans to the reality of its recent growth.
“Many of us were inspired to start up this work after witnessing the murder of Heather Heyer at the Unite The Right rally, which Patriot Front was involved in,” Sammy writes. “Hundreds of white nationalists flooded into Charlottesville and wreaked havoc on locals and anti-racists who opposed them. We wanted to know ‘who are these Nazis and how can we stop them from doing this again?’”
Durham’s Patriot Front connections color his brief enrollment at CU-Boulder
Colorado antifascists weren’t the only ones who took note of Durham’s online and offline activity. His high school did not let him walk at graduation, according to Durham’s own account, because of the connections unearthed by antifascists and the attention they garnered.
Those connections followed him to college at the University of Colorado Boulder, where allied antifascists coordinated with the local chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America to hang flyers warning other students of Durham’s history and violent rhetoric.
A joint investigation by CU Independent and The Bold, both student-run news outlets at CU-Boulder, reported on these flyers, interviewing Durham about his past, much of which he confirmed. As the Jan. 30, 2023, story details:
He also said he published social media posts encouraging the killing of immigrants and Black people.
“I’m not going to try and excuse or play away what I did, obviously,” Durham said. “I’m not going to apologize for it either. It’s just something that’s in the past for me.”
Durham did not definitively say whether he still held the violent beliefs that appeared in his social media posts, which were published in 2021.
“I can’t put an exact date on it because a lot of this stuff is messy. But it’s been, I think, a year or more by now,” since he was last affiliated with Patriot Front, Durham said.
Within hours of his interview with the student journalists, police were dispatched to Durham’s residence hall, responding to reports of suspicious activity.
According to the 2023 story, which cites the police report, witnesses “told police the pair of older adults were part of the white nationalist group Durham has been affiliated with,” while police found “Patriot Front messages and propaganda on Durham’s laptop” and alleged Durham was communicating with hate group members via Telegram.
Four days later, CU-Boulder confirmed Durham was no longer a student, according to the story from CU Independent and The Bold.
Kelver said the reporting from the CU-Boulder student papers sheds new light on the differing accounts she and Durham gave to police the night of their confrontation.
Kelver alleges the encounter began when Durham shouted anti-trans and other anti-queer slurs, including calling the Crowbar a “fag bar,” and that he continued using slurs as the two approached each other in the street. According to the police report from that night, Durham told police he shouted only “fuck the Crowbar” because he “likes the Buckhorn Bar better.”
Kelver said Durham’s statements to Laramie police in September rhyme with the statements he made to student journalists and campus police in 2023.
“He clearly has a history and pattern of lying to officials when he gets caught in something,” Kelver said. “He’s just trying to do it again.”
UW does not review social media, group affiliations during admissions process
Durham came to Wyoming and enrolled in the University of Wyoming, where he remains a student.
UW confirmed Durham was enrolled for the upcoming fall semester, but required The Laramie Reporter to file a records request for any reports the university might have received about Durham’s past behavior and affiliations.
UW spokesman Chad Baldwin answered questions by email about the university’s process for dealing with reports of past or current misbehavior on the part of students.
“The University evaluates concerns based on available facts, applicable policies, and individualized assessment of risk and conduct, rather than assumptions based on affiliation, reputation, or public commentary,” Baldwin said. “When reviewing what behavior may constitute a threat, UW balances individual rights to free speech that may be offensive or controversial against unprotected speech, such as a true threat or incitement to violence, and conduct that risks the health and safety of others.”
In general, a history of making hateful social media posts would not be enough to keep a student from enrolling at UW.
“UW does not review an individual’s social media history as part of the admissions process,” Baldwin said.
He added the university could deny admission based on felony convictions or disciplinary actions “where admission would involve an unreasonable risk to property or a risk to the safety or welfare of individuals within the campus community or the general public considering the full context of an applicant’s history.”
According to UW policies, prospective students are asked if they have “ever been found responsible” for “academic or behavioral misconduct that resulted in disciplinary action” in high school or previous colleges, and transfer students are asked if they would be “permitted to return to your most previous institution for the upcoming academic term.”
Answering any of those questions dishonestly could result in discipline at UW. However, “actions taken prior to a student’s enrollment are outside of UW’s jurisdiction to investigate,” Baldwin said, unless the student misrepresents those actions on their application.
Patriot Front membership would not prohibit a student from enrolling at UW.
“UW does not review an applicant’s group affiliations as part of the admissions process,” Baldwin said.
Once a student is admitted, they are subject to the Student Code of Conduct, which prohibits discrimination, harassment, physical violence and property damage, among other activities.
But UW is officially, and legally, committed to protecting free speech. It has removed some racist displays in the past as “litter,” but it has also allowed events such as the Young Americans for Liberty’s free speech ball, which, in December, featured pro-Nazi and other hateful messages.
“Expression protected by the First Amendment and Wyoming Constitution, including controversial and offensive speech, is fully protected on campus,” Baldwin said. “Speech that is not protected by the First Amendment, including incitement, true threats, fighting words, obscenity, defamation, fraud, perjury, and speech integral to criminal conduct, is prohibited.”
Previously known as “Patryck Scott Durham,” the student in question legally changed his name to “Scott Wayne Durham” in the summer of 2025, according to a follow-up report from COSA detailing a public notice published by the Littleton (Colorado) Independent.
In fall 2025, Durham made the dean’s honor roll.
Antifascists: Patriot Front activity in Laramie coincides with Durham’s enrollment at UW
The Colorado antifascists who have kept an eye on Durham, and on extremist activity along the Front Range more generally, say they noticed an uptick in Patriot Front activity in Laramie shortly after Durham enrolled at UW.
“Patriot Front only began being active in Laramie after he left CU Boulder,” Sammy writes. “A search of Patriot Front’s social media shows they published almost no reports of vandalism in Laramie until Durham left CU in 2023. Beginning in late 2023, Patriot Front has recorded dozens of vandalisms in Laramie.”
The extremist group posts photos of the “promotional materials” their members place out in the world via their Telegram channel, as a way of showing off its reach. A search for “Laramie” turns up 22 posts featuring propaganda placed around and outside of Laramie. The posts begin in August 2023 and continue through December 2025.
They show Patriot Front stickers being placed on street signs, telephone poles and other surfaces at Happy Jack, around campus, downtown and elsewhere.
There is no direct evidence linking Durham to these stickers around Laramie, but their placement does coincide with his presence in Wyoming’s university town.
COSA would like to see more accountability.
“Durham has never publicly renounced his membership to Patriot Front or the white nationalist movement. It would be very easy for him to do, and he would be celebrated for it,” Sammy writes. “Until he does so, we have no reason to believe he has left either Patriot Front, or the white nationalist movement as a whole.”
1) Were the police and DA's office aware of who assaulted the person charged and thus brought no charges? Something to ask at the next DA election or even now.
2) No idea why UW enrollment keeps falling when they'll openly protect a terrorist.
Thank you for the excellent reporting.