A violent weekend in the Denver area left multiple people dead and several others injured. In Commerce City, a suburb of Denver, four men were fatally shot, and a woman was hospitalized with gunshot wounds. A person of interest in one of the cases was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police reported on Sunday.
The Denver area also witnessed other violent incidents over the weekend. In Aurora, a nearby city, one person was fatally shot, and three others were injured in two separate altercations on Sunday.
In Denver itself, a series of shootings and stabbings over the weekend resulted in one person dead and six others injured, according to the police.
Joanna Small, a spokesperson 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 typically have around 5 or 6 homicides a year,” Small said. “Now we’re looking at four homicides and a critically injured person within 39 hours… The fact that these crimes are not connected is even more puzzling.”
The motives behind the shootings have not been disclosed.
The first incident occurred on Friday night in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven convenience store in Commerce City. A man and a woman were shot, with the man later dying. The woman was in critical condition as of Sunday morning, Small reported.
Officers attempted to contact a man who was driving a truck involved in the shooting, but he fled and was later found dead on Sunday morning from an apparent suicide.
On Saturday evening, another man was fatally shot in the parking lot of a public park with a pool in Commerce City. A suspect was taken into custody, but Small declined to provide additional details.
Later that night, a gunfight in Commerce City was detected by the city’s gunshot monitoring system. Officers responded and found a stolen vehicle that fled the scene and eventually crashed. Inside the vehicle, a male passenger with a gunshot wound was found dead.
Another passenger and the driver, both injured in the crash, were taken into custody. Returning to the scene of the gunfight, officers discovered a male who had been shot dead in the yard of a nearby residence. Small indicated that the victims and others involved in this incident were believed to be juveniles.
There was no known connection between the shootings at the convenience store, the park, and the residential neighborhood, Small said. She did not provide further details, citing ongoing investigations.
Read More: South Africa: Pastor Wielding Machete and Rifles Arrested
The fatal shooting in Aurora occurred around 2 a.m. in a nightclub parking lot. The identity of the deceased has not been released. A second victim, a 34-year-old man, was shot multiple times but managed to reach the hospital on his own and is expected to survive, according to police. No arrests have been made.
Around the same time, a shooting at an Aurora housing complex left a man hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. A second man, who was stabbed during the incident, is expected to survive, police said.
