A $10,000 reward is being offered by 7-Eleven for information leading to the conviction of the man who shot and killed a store clerk in Aurora Sunday morning.
The homicide investigation is the top priority for Aurora police, with several investigators assigned to track down dozens of tips that have come in, Detective Robert Friel said Tuesday. There has been no arrest so far.
“There are so many directions to go in,” Friel said. “It’s a big spider web.”
Jutte Gallegos Burton, 62, who worked an overnight shift at the 7-Eleven at East Sixth Avenue and Havana Street, was murdered behind the counter at the store at 3:08 a.m. Sunday.
Surveillance video shows the clerk and the gunman looking at each other and having a conversation that lasts about one minute. The man then pointed a shortened shotgun at her and pulled the trigger.
Gallegos Burton tried to run into a manager’s office behind the store counter, Friel said. She was shot once in the back.
Robbery is just one possible motive detectives are considering, even though it appears no money was taken.
Aurora police are also checking on the safety of clerks in convenience stores in the area. For now, 7-Eleven has more than one clerk working in its stores in Aurora as a safety measure, said Chris Erickson, loss prevention officer for the chain.
The shooter might have visited other stores, and investigators are checking other surveillance videos for his image, Erickson said.
Aurora police want customers who were in the 7-Eleven at Sixth and Havana between 2:30 and 3 a.m. Sunday to come forward to answer questions about what they might have seen.
On Tuesday, police revealed that Gallegos Burton has an adult daughter who lives in Aurora. The daughter declined to be interviewed by reporters, but told detectives to pass on the message that her mother was a grandmother to her 5-year-old son. She described Gallegos Burton as a woman who did not have an easy life, but had high morals, Friel said.
In a newsletter published in September 1992, Gallegos Burton described a ministry she co-founded called the Shield House. From a coffee-house setting in Denver’s Capitol Hill, it served people recovering from addiction.
In the newsletter, Gallegos Burton wrote that she had spent many years “involved in substance abuse” but had been “clean” since 1988.
“She formed the Shield ministry after identifying gaps in available services throughout the metro area for people in recovery,” the newsletter says. “She found inadequate opportunities for mutual support, few opportunities for people in recovery to gain skills, and an absence of opportunity for ‘street people’ to obtain access to services.”
Gallegos Burton also has a son serving in the military. A man who identified himself as Gallegos Burton’s son contacted The Denver Post by e-mail. The e-mail sender’s identity could not be independently verified.
“Currently I am deployed and am unable to return due to mission requirements,” the e-mail said. “My mother was a very religious person who believed her mission was to help everyone she knew.”
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
To report a tip
Anyone with information about the shooting of Jutte Gallegos Burton is asked to call Aurora police at 303-739-6079 or Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-STOP. To qualify for the reward, those two numbers must be called. A written claim for the reward should be submitted to 7-Eleven’s corporate office in Dallas no later than 30 days after the indictment or conviction of the killer.
