Robert was smoking a cigarette on the second-floor balcony of a Motel 6 near Peoria Street and Interstate 70 early Saturday when he watched a foot chase.
Two guys were running after a third man. It just seemed like three young drunk guys horsing around at 3:30 a.m., Robert said. Then he heard gunfire. Five shots.
Police say a man was killed.
“It was loud. I thought, hell no,” said Robert, 21, who is on vacation from his home in California. “I ducked back into my room. It was kind of scary.”
When he dared to go back out onto the balcony — crouching — he saw two men in the distance he described only as young and Hispanic running toward Peoria.
He half expected that they had been shooting straight up into the air in some high jinks, but when he looked at the spot of the shooting, he saw a man lying in the middle of the road on his side. Police were called at 3:34 a.m. and found the man in the street on the north end of the 3800 block of Paris Street between the hotel and a Wendy’s restaurant.
People sleeping on the largely industrial block at the “Stay Inn,” where you can rent a room for a month at a time, heard the gunshots too.
“I heard about six or seven loud shots,” said a man who declined to give his name.
The victim, whose name has not been released, was pronounced dead at the scene, said Sonny Jackson, Denver police spokesman.
It appeared he had been struck by one or more bullets, Jackson said. The shooting is being investigated as a homicide, he said.
Police have not released information about any possible suspects.
The Denver medical examiner’s office will determine the man’s identity and give an official cause of death, Jackson said.
Robert, whose last name was withheld to protect his identity, walked out onto the street to the spot where he said the man had fallen hours earlier.
“It’s gone,” he said. “I don’t see any blood. They killed him right here.”
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
