A man was fatally shot and a pregnant woman was wounded in the leg early Saturday morning during a Denver melee that erupted because birthday party visitors parked their car in a neighbor’s parking spot.
A man estimated to be in his 30s was found about 1 a.m. in an apartment parking lot in the 3200 block of Conejos Place. He had been shot in the upper body, according to police.
The man’s name is being withheld until family members are notified, said Sharon Hahn, Denver police spokeswoman.
The pregnant woman was shot in the knee and was treated and released from a local hospital, said the woman’s sister, Raylynn Segundo, 18.
Segundo said the birthday party was for another of her sisters. About 20 people were celebrating when neighbors who live below them in the same small apartment complex returned home from drinking at a bar, she said.
A brother of the family that lives downstairs started yelling and cursing at them to move a car that was parked in their parking space, Segundo said.
“He was running his mouth,” she said.
The visitor moved the car but the man kept yelling at them, she said. He faced off with her, Segundo said.
A loud argument ensued and awoke other residents, said neighbor Don Maes, 57.
“Why are you acting like a man,'” Segundo said the man who was fatally shot yelled at her.
The man went to his car and opened the trunk. People at the party ran in different directions to get away because they thought he was getting a gun, a witness to the shooting said. Instead, he pulled out a crowbar and started threatening people with it.
The witness said a man walked around a car with his hand on a gun that was tucked into the front of his pants. He pulled the handgun out and fired, the witness said.
Maes, who lives several houses away, said his wife heard gunshots and then heard someone running across their yard. “They threw the weapon right in our yard,” he said.
Allen Cox, 36, said he thought someone at the birthday party had fired off fireworks.
“We heard some screams,” he said.
Police are trying to identify the shooting suspect, she said.
“We were thinking about buying our house,” Cox said. But he said this was the third fatal shooting in the neighborhood in a few months.
He shook his head, standing beside the sloped parking lot where a trail of blood that ran about 20 feet was visible.
“To die for a stupid thing like a parking spot,” he said. “I think we’re going to have to move.”
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
