Nearly one in six people shot or killed in Denver during the first half of the year were children, reversing gains in youth safety the city experienced over the last two years.
The uptick in youth violence comes amid a jump in homicides across the city, with 26 homicides in the first six months of 2026 compared to 18 at this point in 2025, when the city saw the third-lowest number of annual homicides on record since 1990.
Still, both youth violence and overall homicides remain well below levels the city experienced when crime spiked during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic, and police data shows other categories of reported crime — including property crime, auto theft and burglary — are down when compared to this point in 2025.
“Every crime category is down with the exception of homicides, which is drastically up when compared to last year but down compared to the three-year average,” Chief Ron Thomas said. “Obviously, we are concerned about that. …One thing we are noticing is the age of suspects and victims being younger in many instances.”
Six children were killed in Denver during the first half of the year and 11 more were wounded in shootings. In 2025, no children had been killed by July 1 and just two were wounded in shootings, according to police data obtained by The Denver Post through open records requests.
In 2022, by contrast, there had been almost twice as many homicides by the midpoint of the year, with 50 people killed in Denver by July 1, including 14 children. Another 23 children were wounded in shootings, according to police data.
Two of the children killed this year are suspected victims of child abuse, including 2-month-old Adhara Gomez-Bastardo, who died May 25 in the 1600 block of South Albion Street. Her death is being investigated as a homicide due to traumatic injuries, but no one has yet been charged, and officials are still determining the cause of death, Major Crimes Division Cmdr. Matt Clark said.
Also slain was 2-year-old Valkyrie Erickson, who died Jan. 17. Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend have been charged in connection with her death. The other youth killed this year were teenagers ranging from 14 to 17 years old, including a 14-year-old boy shot to death inside the Montbello Recreation Center.
Overall, the city saw 59 non-fatal shootings with 68 victims through June, compared to 60 shootings with 69 victims in the first six months of 2025, police data shows.
Thomas said personal disputes continue to drive violence in Denver, with a “little bit of a gang nexus” within the youth violence, though he noted that the gangs police are seeing now tend to be cliques that are more organized around friendships than traditional gang allegiances or geographic territory.
“It is not like they are involved in defending territory or dealing drugs,” Thomas said. “A lot of these conflicts just emanate over battles back and forth online, sometimes over significant others, and then because of the online dispute, they choose to meet somewhere and shoot at each other. It begins as something less than a shooting but ultimately evolves to a shooting.”
He urged parents to ensure their children do not carry guns and said the police department will continue to work with community partners to head off such youth violence.
Jonathan McMillan, the former head of Denver’s , said the increase in young victims is, so far, a “minor spike.”
“It’s definitely concerning, but we are nowhere near where we were pre-COVID and immediately after COVID,” he said. “I don’t think there is a need for widespread alarm, but I do believe we could get ahead of this now if the city is willing to invest in the violence prevention strategies implemented back in 2020.”
The city focused heavily on youth violence prevention when killings spiked several years ago, but the effort has seen budget cuts and disorganization under Mayor Mike Johnston, McMillan said.
“Under the new administration, there has been a lack of buy-in, and if I’m being frank, a bit of disorganization around the comprehensive strategy that I truly believe contributed — maybe was not the sole reason, but contributed — to the historic decline in homicides and violence last year,” McMillan said. “We are looking at the lag effect of policies and programs and funding that went into youth violence and gun violence prevention in 2020 and 2021.”
Thomas pushed back on that stance, calling it “a little bit of a mischaracterization” and defending the city’s ongoing prevention efforts.
“From a city perspective, the focus remains,” he said. “I think one challenge is that funding is less and less available, both in the city, state and certainly at the federal level.”
In addition to the uptick in young victims, Denver also saw a spate of violence along a stretch of East Hampden Avenue on the far southeast side of the city near the Cherry Creek Reservoir.
The violence along the corridor was a series of unrelated incidents, Clark said.
Four people were killed and another three shot along an about 1.5-mile stretch of the road in four incidents so far this year, including a January quadruple shooting in which a 16-year-old boy and a 26-year-old man were killed when a party celebrating the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro devolved into gunfire.
A double shooting in March in the 8400 block of East Hamden Avenue that killed 59-year-old Patricia Daniel and wounded a 37-year-old woman was an act of family violence inside an apartment, Clark said. And in a separate incident, 47-year-old Neal Jones was beaten to death outside a nightclub in the 9700 block of East Hampden Avenue.
“There are some entertainment establishments in that area that attract crowds and that have late-night hours where they let out, and there is also a very large apartment complex over there that is sort of a low-income, underserved community that lives in that area,” Thomas said of the corridor.
The police department has increased its patrols in the dense neighborhood and routinely conducts outreach to residents in the large apartment complex, Thomas said.
