Commerce City police officers shot and wounded two gunmen, one of them fatally, after a car chase that began with a robbery on a quiet residential street Thursday afternoon.
Both men were in their early 20s, but their names were not released “for investigative reasons.”
“Both suspects were armed,” said police Lt. Chuck Saunier. The surviving gunman is being treated at a local hospital. No one else was hurt.
The trouble started just before 4 p.m. near East 107th Avenue and Kalispell Street. Christina Gomez, who lives in the neighborhood, said her husband, Eduardo, was driving home when a white Toyota sedan rear-ended his Nissan Armada sport utility vehicle.He stepped from his vehicle and was confronted by two men with guns who ordered him to the ground.
The men demanded his wallet and a cache of cellphones in his vehicle. He sells the phones by advertising over the Internet, his wife said, and he quickly concluded that the men had been following him. As he lay in the road, the men started rifling through his vehicle. At that point, he jumped to his feet, ran down the street and hid in a neighbor’s garage.
“He was pretty shaken up over it,” Christina Gomez said.
Saunier said two detectives in the area on other business in an unmarked sedan responded to a 911 call.
They saw the white Toyota and chased it out of the neighborhood toward Chambers Road. At one point, the Toyota jumped the curb, mowed down several small trees and a street sign, and continued west to Chambers.
A short time later, at East 120th Avenue and Chambers Road, the Toyota ground to a halt, minus its left front tire.
The two men in the Toyota jumped out and ran west along 120th Avenue, attempting to grab another vehicle in the midst of the afternoon rush hour near several housing developments and the Buffalo Run Golf Course.
The detectives followed, and gunfire erupted. Saunier said Thursday evening that it was too early to know whether the suspects fired at the officers.
The incident led police to close 120th Avenue from Buckley Road west to Sable Boulevard. Chambers Road also was closed.
Christina Gomez was obviously relieved that her husband was not hurt, and she was especially glad he did not stop on his way home to pick up their two young children, as he told her he contemplated.
“I was very thankful that he was the one to call me, that it wasn’t someone else calling me to say that he had been shot,” she said.
The area of East 120th Avenue reopened about 10 p.m.
Kevin Vaughan: 303-954-5019
