A man shot and killed by Denver police while carrying what appeared to be a rifle in a south Denver backyard was actually carrying a BB gun, department officials said Wednesday.
The man, 58-year-old Joseph Frank Martinez, was shot after police officers responded to a 911 call about a man outside with a gun in the 1000 block of South Quitman Street on April 7.
Police officials initially said Martinez was in an alley when the shooting happened but on Wednesday clarified he was in the backyard of a home.
Although a family member had told police they thought Martinez’s weapon might not be real or functional, officers were still dealing with a man carrying and pointing what looked like a rifle, Cmdr. Matt Clark said in a
Officers were at the scene with 3 minutes of the 911 call and spent more than an hour trying to talk with Martinez, Clark said.
“The subject responded to the officers intermittently but refused to answer questions, did not comply with directions and generally responded with profanity,” he said.
At one point, a family member came out of the house and tried to wrestle the rifle away from Martinez but couldn’t get control of it, Clark said.
A shows Martinez pacing around the yard and intermittently pointing the rifle before walking toward the southeast corner of the yard, where Clark said a Denver SWAT officer was positioned on the other side of the fence.
The officer believed Martinez was going to shoot him and fired on him five times, Clark said. A SWAT team then approached, secured the rifle, took Martinez out of the yard and started CPR. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.
A shows police trying to convince the man to surrender until moments before he was shot. The officer’s camera was facing a fence, but the officer can be heard using his radio to inform others Martinez was coming toward him and then telling Martinez to drop the weapon.
Investigators later determined the weapon was a pump-style BB rifle with a metal barrel, Clark said.
The shooting is being investigated by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the State Patrol, the Denver district attorney’s office and the police department’s homicide unit.
