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Vancouver Island man facing Colorado sex assault charges released

Man accused of sexually assaulting a 27-year-woman whom he met at a bar
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VANCOUVER — A Vancouver Island man charged in what the U.S. District Attorney's office has called a brutal sexual assault has been released from custody in Denver.

Colby Messer has been charged with six counts of sexual assault after a 27-year-old woman alleged she was sexually assaulted at a hotel last November, a news release from the Office of the Denver District Attorney says.

The 30-year-old man was charged last week, the release says.

Messer was released after posting a US$300,000 cash bond, spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough of the District Attorney's Office says in an email on Monday.

The conditions of his release include that he must surrender his passport, remain in Denver and wear a GPS tracking device, she says.

Ken Eichner, a Denver-based lawyer listed in court documents as representing Messer, declined to comment on the case.

The arrest warrant and an affidavit from police detailing the woman's allegations that have been filed in court say three other men from Vancouver Island are suspects in the case, but their identities have not been released.

The affidavit alleges that the woman was out celebrating her birthday with a friend when they met two men who offered to buy them drinks.

The woman told police that she remembers going to a bar and having drinks with the men, but does not remember going with them to a hotel.

She said she woke up naked on a hotel room bed, bleeding and felt that she had been sexually assaulted.

The documents allege that objects available in the hotel room were used in the sexual assaults.

Denver police identified four suspects by looking at hotel records and surveillance footage.

Officers contacted police in Vancouver, who told them that none of the men had a criminal record, the affidavit says.

The document says Vancouver police told their Denver counterparts that driver licence records for the four men showed two of the men lived in Victoria and two lived in Port Alberni.

The affidavit says all four returned to Canada the day after the assault.

Messer was arrested in Las Vegas last week.

"It is my understanding that he had travelled to Las Vegas to propose to his girlfriend," Kimbrough says in an email.

He is scheduled to appear in Denver court Tuesday.