DENVER — Four men were fatally shot and a woman was hospitalized with gunshot wounds during a weekend spate of violence in Commerce City, a Denver suburb. A person involved in one of the cases was found shot to death, police said Sunday.
Also in the Denver area, one person was fatally shot and three others were injured in two altercations Sunday in the city of Aurora, authorities said.
Joanna Small, a spokeswoman for the Commerce City Police Department, described it as “an incredibly violent weekend” for the growing community of about 70,000 people, located just northeast of Denver near the city’s airport.
“We’re averaging five or six homicides a year,” she said. “Now we’re talking about four homicides and one person in critical condition in 39 hours… The fact that the crimes are not connected is even more disconcerting.”
Potential motives for the shootings have not been released.
The first incident happened Friday night in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven supermarket in Commerce City. A man and a woman were shot and the man later died. The woman remained hospitalized in critical condition Sunday morning, Small said.
Officers then attempted to contact a man driving a truck involved in the shooting, but he fled and was found dead by suicide Sunday morning.
A man was fatally shot in the parking lot of a public pool park in Commerce City on Saturday night. One person was taken into custody, but Small declined to provide further details.
Later that night, officers responded to shots fired during a shooting detected by Commerce City’s gunshot monitoring system. Officers encountered a stolen vehicle with three people who fled the scene and then crashed, authorities said. A passenger with gunshot wounds was found dead inside the vehicle.
A second passenger and the driver were injured in the crash and taken into custody. Officers who returned to the scene of the shooting found a man who had been shot in the yard of a residence, Small said.
The victims and others involved in the case are believed to be minors, she said.
There is no known connection between the shootings at the store, the park and the residential neighborhood, Small said. She declined to provide further details, citing ongoing investigations.
The fatal Aurora shooting happened around 2 a.m. in the parking lot of a nightclub, police said. Details about the victim were not immediately released. A second victim, a 34-year-old man, was shot multiple times but made it to a hospital on his own and is expected to survive, police said. No arrests have been made.
At the same time, a shooting occurred at an Aurora apartment complex, leaving one man hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, police said. A second man who was stabbed in that incident is expected to survive, police said.
