LAKEWOOD, Colo. (KDVR) — Five people are dead after a series of shootings Monday night in Denver and Lakewood, including one that sent an officer to a hospital.
Two women were killed and one man was injured in the first shooting near First Avenue and Broadway, Denver Police Department Chief Paul Pazen said. Another man was killed in a shooting near 12th Avenue and Williams Street in Denver. Both of these shootings were reported about an hour prior to the Lakewood officer being shot.
Within two hours, police say, there were additional shooting scenes at Sixth Avenue and Cherokee Street as well as Eighth Avenue and Zuni Street, but no injuries were reported at either scene.
The suspected shooter then continued his spree in Lakewood where police said two people, including the suspect, are dead and two people, including an officer, are injured. The officer was taken to the hospital.
The suspect was reported in Lakewood just before 6 p.m., firing shots near the intersection of Colfax Avenue and Kipling Street. One person was killed at this scene.
A short time later Lakewood officers spotted the car in the Belmar area where the suspect shot at them and they shot back.
The suspect ran away to a nearby business where police say said the suspect showed his gun, then went to the Hyatt House where he shot one of the clerks. That clerk was taken to the hospital, but the police did not know their condition.
The suspect then ran away from the Hyatt and had shot at officers, injuring one, who shot back. This is when the suspect was killed. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating specifics about how the suspect died.
“This one individual was responsible for this very violent crime spree that took place this evening,” Pazen said.
Witnesses told NewsNation affiliate KDVR they heard several rounds of gunfire near the shopping center on Wadsworth Boulevard. Many businesses were put into lockdown, some for several hours, while police cleared the area.
“We seen (sic) the lady officer just yelled: ‘put your gun down. Put your gun away!’ And we just seen the suspect pull his gun out and, literally, shoot her, in front of us and she was on the floor, she was on the ground,” one witness said. “He turned and he kept shooting, almost shooting toward us, but my friend, backed up, just in time or we would have been shot, as well.”
Witnesses who were driving in the Belmar area said they saw the suspect and a female officer interacting.
“We seen (sic) the guy: he was a tall man, blond hair, with a trench coat. She yelled at him to ‘put his gun down!’ She yelled, ‘put your gun down’ and he turned around and, like, pulled up the gun and shot her right in front of us, multiple times,” another witness said.