The in August told his hostage he wanted to die by suicide, and police knew that before officers confronted him, newly released records show.
Dispatch told the first officer on the scene that Dariss Yearby, 20, was suicidal 10 minutes before the officer set foot in the home, body-worn-camera footage shows. It is unclear whether the officer who fatally shot Yearby heard that call before running into the house, telling the three other officers, “If it’s hostage, we’ve got to push,” and shooting Yearby, all within 28 seconds.
Another officer had offered the shooting officer his TASER, footage shows.
Yearby was shot and killed Aug. 10 in a home on Bluebird Drive after taking an 18-year-old woman hostage and repeatedly telling police he had a gun. The woman’s mother had called police around 2:27 p.m. that day and said Yearby strangled her daughter and was threatening to kill her, according to body-worn-camera footage and the 911 call audio released Thursday by the city.
The mother told police around 2:36 p.m. on the same call that Yearby was “threatening moreso to kill himself,” according to the call audio. The first Longmont police officer got to the house at 2:36 p.m., and officers didn’t enter the home until about 2:44 p.m., after getting permission from the mother, body camera footage shows.
The 18-year-old Yearby was holding hostage had discreetly called her mother and grandmother, who overheard Yearby saying he wanted to die by suicide, according to dispatch audio. The mother told a dispatcher, who later told an officer on the scene.
The first officer appears to have rung the doorbell multiple times before knocking on the home’s front door, when a dog nosed the already-ajar door further open, allowing the officer to hear Yearby upstairs and shout to him and the woman, according to the footage.
After repeatedly ordering Yearby to come downstairs to no avail, three officers went upstairs and confronted Yearby, who was holding a bag up to the woman’s neck, the footage shows. An officer ordered Yearby to put up his hands, and Yearby repeatedly said he had a gun.
“Please don’t shoot him,” the woman shouted to the officer while Yearby held her against him. “He’s lying because he wants to die. Please don’t.”
The woman asked the police not to shoot Yearby several more times, getting louder and sounding more frantic with each plea, the footage shows.
That’s when a fourth officer came into the house, ran up the stairs and confronted Yearby, who was still holding the woman. That officer asked the other three if he had a gun and got no answer. He then asked Yearby what was in his hand, and Yearby responded multiple times that he had a gun, the footage shows.
Seven seconds before the shot, another officer pulled out what appears to be a stun gun and asked, “Do you want to try a TASER?” No one answered him.
Then, after ordering him to “drop it” at least seven times, the officer shot him in the middle of ordering him to drop it an eighth time, the footage shows.
Police did not find a gun when searching the room and bag, officials later confirmed.
Longmont released the body-worn-camera footage, 911 call audio and dispatch audio to the public because of a Times-Call records request, spokesperson Robin Ericson wrote in an email. Ericson would not answer a question about whether the fact that police knew Yearby was suicidal was a factor in their response, citing the Boulder County District Attorney’s ongoing investigation.
Yearby was accused of assaulting the same woman in February 2025, arrested in April 2025 on an attempted murder charge and released on a bond that let him out without posting any money, which is atypical for attempted murder charges, court data shows. He was arrested again in May for violating an order that prevented him from contacting the woman and was again let out on a bond amount less than what the DA’s office asked for.
The video the city posted, which includes graphic content, can be found at .
This is a developing story.
