When prison guard Michael Cohen learned his son had been in a shootout with an Aurora police officer, he was relieved that it was his son who was killed and not the officer.
“I’m glad the Lord went and took (my son) rather than the officer,” Cohen said Thursday by phone from Tennessee. “Thank God the police officer wasn’t killed, because I would have had his family on my mind for the rest of my life.”
Michael R. Simmons, 32, the son of a correctional officer and the grandson of a New York City police officer, knew better, Cohen said.
“My son going against the law and trying to kill an officer … that’s unbelievable,” said Cohen, an officer at the Whiteville Correctional Facility in Tennessee. “It’s no way whatsoever (the police officer’s) fault.”
On Thursday, police arrested a second suspect in the police shooting Tuesday night in which Simmons was killed.
Rayshaun J. Holmes, 24, called police early Thursday and told them he knew they were searching for him, so he turned himself in, according to police.
Holmes was being held without bail for investigation of criminal attempt to commit first-degree murder of a police officer. Authorities also arrested a 17-year-old boy Tuesday night in connection with the shooting.
An officer who has not been named ran a license-plate check on a car near East Colfax Avenue and Kenton Street about 10:40 p.m. Tuesday and discovered the car had been stolen in Lakewood, police said. The car, with three people inside, sped away.
When the officer caught up with the car, Simmons shot at him, according to police. The officer shot back, killing Simmons, police said. The officer has been placed on paid leave pending an investigation.
“The officer did exactly what he was trained to do,” police spokesman Rudy Herrera said.
Cohen said that after his wife left him, his dream in raising his 1- and 2-year-old sons was that they would follow in his and his father’s footsteps and become law-enforcement officers.
Before Cohen became a correctional officer, he spent 10 years in the Army and took his boys with him as he traveled to bases across the country and to Germany.
He played basketball with them every day, he said. When he injured his back in an accident, it was tougher to manage his growing boys, he said. He quit the Army to devote more time to them, he said.
“My children know for a fact that I raised them right,” said Cohen, whose son took his mother’s last name because he was born before Cohen and his wife were married.
Despite his law-enforcement heritage, Simmons seemed to rebel against police authority.
When Simmons was 20, police in Moorhead, Minn., charged him with fleeing a police officer in a car. Between 2001 and 2004, Denver police charged him three times with either obstructing a police officer or resisting a police officer. He also had been arrested for assault, carrying a concealed weapon and disturbing the peace.
Cohen said he had lost track of his son in recent years. It had been five years since he had last heard from him when he got a strange call a week ago, Cohen said.
“He said all he wanted was my blessing and for me to tell him I loved him,” he said.
Simmons also called his 12-year-old daughter, who lives in Minneapolis, last week and said he wanted to see her soon because something was going to happen to him.
Simmons’ former neighbor called Cohen after the shooting and said Simmons’ behavior had changed dramatically the past two months. He had started buying guns, the neighbor told Cohen. Simmons, who was a booking agent for musical groups and bands, had told the neighbor that if police stopped him, it was going to be either him or them.
“To me, it was like he knew he was going to leave this earth,” Cohen said.
Cohen said that when police called him to tell him about the shooting, he learned that the officer whom his son had shot at was married and had children. He was relieved that his son’s aim was bad, he said.
Cohen said there is something he would like to ask the son who he had hoped would become a third-generation law enforcement officer:
“What happened to make you skip the script?”
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
