Five people were found dead Sunday inside an apartment in Commerce City.
The bodies of three women and two men were discovered around 3:45 p.m. inside a home at The North Range Crossings Apartments at 14480 E. 104th Ave., Commerce City police Chief Clint Nichols said. Another adult and an infant who was about 4 months old were in the apartment but survived, he said.
Nichols said it did not appear the five people were killed violently, and there was no indication of any hazardous gases in the area. A substance that “could be described as illicit narcotics” was found in the home, Nichols said, but further testing was needed to determine exactly what the substance is.
Investigators have not yet determined how the five people died, he said.
“If it is going to be illicit drugs, they were very, very bad,” Nichols said. “If it was drugs, no one was able to get to a phone and call 911 for a medical emergency. It happened pretty quickly — speculation on my part.”
Ian Scott, 31, a next-door neighbor to the apartment where the bodies were found, said he heard screaming Sunday afternoon and stepped outside to find a distraught woman holding a baby and talking on the phone.
He said the woman appeared “high as a kite” and that she told him she’d given a drug used to reverse overdoses to a man in the apartment. Scott peeked inside the apartment and saw three bodies, he said.
There had been music and thumping in the apartment on Saturday night until around midnight, he said, and it had sounded like a party.
“It was a party,” he said. “I saw what I saw.”
Scott said he watched officers arrive; one took the baby from the woman. Both the infant and the woman are expected to be OK, Nichols said, describing the infant as fine and the woman as “lucid.”
Investigators were not sure Sunday night if the baby’s parents were in the apartment, Nichols said. It was also unclear if the five people found dead all lived in the apartment, or how they knew each other.
Neighbors said the apartment complex sees frequently police visits for various problems. They said many families with young kids live in the complex.
