Closing time in Denver’s Lower Downtown entertainment district can be dangerous. Brawls and sometimes shootings can happen.
Colorado state law dictates that bars serving liquor must shut their doors at 2 a.m.
In LoDo, huge crowds of people pack sidewalks in the minutes before and after that deadline.
According to one Denver Post report in 2013, a person is more likely to be a crime victim between 1 and 3 a.m. in LoDo than in any other part of the city at that time.
In the early morning hours of Sunday, Nov. 6, 2007, 15th Street between Market and Blake streets in the heart of LoDo became a shooting gallery.
Rob McGowan, an audio engineer at Poor House Pub, 1435 Market St., told a Denver Post reporter at the time that he first heard tires squealing as a car raced down Market.
Then a fusillade of bullets erupted and people began dropping on the street.
Eight people were shot including Theodore Padilla, a father of three, who was fatally injured outside Hush nightclub.
In 2008, there was a closing-time gunfight in a parking lot at 18th and Market, in which officers killed one man and wounded another who fired a shotgun at them.
At 2:04 a.m. on Saturday, July 13, 2013, several fights broke out at 15th and Market streets.
It was chaos.
A gunshot was fired in a LoDo alley. In another incident, a man accidentally shot himself in the leg while pulling out a gun.
