A man gunned down in the doorway of his Littleton apartment early Tuesday morning was the apparent target of a hit dispatched by a reputed drug dealer in Pontiac, Mich., an arrest affidavit filed Wednesday indicates.
The motive, however, isn’t clearly spelled out by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which traced the alleged hitman, Franco Gonzalo Sierra-Rodriguez, and two female drivers from Michigan to Colorado.
The victim, publicly named for the first time in the document as Joaquin Lucero-Carillo, might have been part of the alleged drug-trafficking operations of Enrique Amaya, but Littleton police told an investigating DEA agent Lucero-Carillo “might have been involved with a married woman.”
The wire-tapped conversations are referred to as “drug-related communications.”
Witnesses in the courtyard at the Parkland Square Apartments on Belleview Avenue near Federal Boulevard told local investigators a man carrying a pistol calmly walked past them about 1 a.m.
He went up a flight of stairs and banged on an apartment door until the resident answered. They spoke briefly and the gunman shot the other man multiple times at close range.
He then returned to an idling car in the parking lot and left.
The car was described as dark Pontiac Grand Am or a Honda Prelude.
DEA agents in Pontiac who were monitoring cryptic cell phone conversations said Sierra-Rodriguez and the two women — who were not told of hit and were paid $1,000 plus expenses for the trip — traveled in a burgundy 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix, which for a time was parked in a church lot across the street from Amaya’s Michigan home.
The DEA believes the trio stayed at a hotel near West Hampden Avenue and South Wadsworth Boulevard before the alleged assault.
Wednesday night, police located Sierra-Rodriguez through his cell-phone signal at a hotel in Houston, where he and the women were arrested.
On Tuesday, Lt. Sean Dugan of the Littleton Police Department called the shooting “a very cold-blooded, very calculated act.”
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
