Officers arrested , 50, on suspicion of second-degree murder, the Aurora Police Department said in a news release.

The shooting happened at around 4:30 a.m. June 7 in an alley between the 1400 blocks of Dallas and Clinton streets, according to the agency.

Investigators believe a group of people were in the alley when an argument started and Zarco opened fire, killing a 25-year-old man. Zarco ran from the scene.

The man’s name will be released by the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office.

Police are still investigating the case, and anyone with information about the case can contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.

But the isn’t part of a traditional true-crime production. It’s a video created by the to promote the agency’s new podcast, a four-episode look into an unsolved 2016 homicide that investigators hope will spur new tips in the cold case.

Aurora’s foray into the true-crime genre is an unusual approach for Colorado police departments — while a handful of agencies have produced podcasts, the shows typically include straightforward sessions designed to on the basics of policing or offer .

The Aurora police podcast is intentionally framed to feel like a true-crime show, said Joe Moylan, spokesman for the department. The genre is known for retelling the stories of real violent crimes and packaging the evidence and facts of the case in an air of mystery, relying on sensationalism, morbid curiosity and storytelling techniques to keep listeners engaged.

“We’re trying to tap into that audience,” Moylan said. “It¶¶Òőap a very popular genre; there have been a lot of instances recently where a tip from a podcast has helped solve a case.”

The police-produced podcast is, in some ways, part of a long tradition of law enforcement seeking to connect directly with residents, particularly on social media. But the reality of the true-crime genre also means a police-produced podcast raises questions about ethics and the use of public resources, said Kelly McBride, senior vice president at , a Florida nonprofit focused on media ethics.

“Most of the time when a true-crime podcast jumps in to solve a cold case, it¶¶Òőap because the police have failed,” she said. “They are the police. They have all the investigative tools available to them, including the ability to just tell their story. So why create a form of entertainment around it?”

Moylan said the hope is that the unusual approach will generate more attention on the case than traditional methods of sharing information. The police department has for years sought tips on the 2016 killing of Chelsea Yasser, but none have yet panned out.

“My best days at work are when I push out a news release or we kick something out on social media and we find out after the fact that a member of the public saw it, we got a good tip on it, we made an arrest and we solved the case,” he said. “If doing something a little bit different generates some interest, and we are able to get that final piece of the puzzle and solve this case, it would definitely be a cool thing to be a small part of that.”

A criticism of the true-crime genre — and mainstream media — has been the tendency for podcasters and journalists to focus on sensational, high-profile murder cases, often with white female victims, said Michael Tracey, professor emeritus in the at the .

“Whenever I lecture about JonBenĂ©t Ramsey, I point out that 804 children under the age of 12 were murdered in America in 1996 and you heard about just one,” he said, adding later that it remains to be seen how Aurora police handle their podcast.

“Is it done professionally and ethically with a real aim at solving a crime?” he asked. “If it is only the dead white girl syndrome, that raises some serious issues.”

‘Just a unique homicide’

Aurora’s podcast will focus on the 2016 killing of 21-year-old Yasser, who was stabbed to death in the parking lot of a Burlington Coat Factory. The case was chosen for the podcast because investigators think it is solvable, Moylan said.

Yasser was stabbed inside a minivan in the store’s parking lot, and the attack was captured on . Police have long focused on identifying the driver of that van and hope the podcast will bring in new tips, Moylan said.

“We decided on this one because it is just a unique homicide in the fact it was captured on video, for the most part, and we still don’t have any idea who did it,” he said.

The episodes will cover the day of the killing, the victim, early investigative efforts and more recent cold-case investigative efforts, Moylan said.

Tracey said the police department’s approach is a “clever idea.”

“Podcasts are just an emergent form of communicating. It’s how the technology has evolved and is being used,” he said, adding that the video trailer for the podcast suggests police are on the right track. “The Aurora podcast is clearly an effort to use this new medium to engage with this new world with a legitimate end of solving a really nasty crime. To me, that is laudable.”

Listeners of all podcasts — including podcasts produced by police — should consider the source and think critically about what motivated the podcaster, McBride said. She noted that the Aurora Police Department has a “horrible” reputation nationwide in the wake of high-profile use-of-force incidents like the death of Elijah McClain.

The podcast, she said, is a “roundabout” and labor-intensive way of investigating the cold case.

“It makes me wonder if that is what their real motivation is, or if they are trying to change the narrative about the department, which is nationally known for a couple of notorious incidents,” she said.

She noted that investigative material made public through the podcast should also be made public to anyone who wants it.

“Officials are not supposed to play favorites with public records requests,” she said. “If they are making something public, they are supposed to make it public — and they can’t make it public just for themselves.”

Moylan expected the department would release additional materials about the Yasser case. He noted that the podcast — “The White Whale — The Chelsea Yasser Story,” launching June 29 — relied on staff time and resources and did not have any extra production budget.

‘The podcast got them hooked’

Police agencies producing their own true-crime podcasts is not unprecedented.

The New York Police Department has published a , exploring both notorious closed cases and unsolved homicides. The Newport Beach Police Department, in California, published a true-crime podcast in 2018 to try to track down a fugitive who was wanted for murder.

That podcast, dubbed included six 15-minute episodes. The police department launched it alongside a website where podcast listeners could leave tips about the fugitive and photos related to the case.

“The podcast got them hooked on it, and then they would go to the website and they could see what he looked like,” said Jennifer Manzella, a longtime employee at Newport Beach Police Department who spearheaded the project.

That received 1.2 million views between the podcast’s launch in September 2018 and the end of the year, she said. The man was arrested in 2019 after someone tipped off police that he was in Mexico, Manzella said.

She couldn’t say for sure that the podcast reached the tipster, but credited the effort for boosting publicity around the case and generating mainstream media coverage.

“The podcast worked hugely in their favor in that (the fugitive) knew we were actively looking for him,” she said. “He was in the news again, all the sudden. And his face was all over the place. He had to move more frequently.”

Manzella said her team intentionally gave the podcast a generic name so that they could use it on other cases in the future, but the agency has not yet produced another season. No other case has been the right fit, she said.

“It is much easier to justify spending a lot of staff time and resources on doing something that can’t be accomplished in any other way, or was an extraordinary need for the department,” she said. “In this case, finding (the suspect) was worth that additional push… There hasn’t been a parallel case where the assistance of the community would have had the same impact for us.”

The Denver Police Department has rolled out a over the last several months to try to educate Spanish-speaking residents on policing after discovering that some residents were afraid to attend police educational and outreach events in person during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, spokesman Doug Schepman said.

The agency also publishes that feature interviews with investigators and victims’ families, though the series lacks the hallmarks of the true-crime genre.

The teenager was last seen at about 10 a.m. Monday, leaving his home in the 14900 block of East Arizona Place in western Aurora, according to an alert from the police department. He was found safe later that afternoon.

This is a developing story.

Standing on a street corner in Denver’s historically Black Five Points neighborhood, a group of activists, elected officials and mothers of those slain by police called on the attorney general to commit to retrying the cases and publicly acknowledge the previous convictions.

“What this system told us yesterday was liberty and justice for all — except Elijah McClain and anyone that looks like him,” said MiDian Shofner, CEO of the .

The appeals court on Thursday reversed homicide convictions for Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper, the former paramedics, ruling that the district court failed to properly instruct the jury on the standard of care applicable to the criminally negligent homicide charge. The three-judge panel upheld Cichuniec’s second-degree assault by drugging conviction.

Attorney General Phil Weiser, in a statement Thursday, said his office would appeal the decision.

McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, died after Aurora police put him in a neck hold and Cooper injected him with an overdose of ketamine, a sedative. He was coming from a convenience store on Aug. 24, 2019, after buying a few cans of iced tea when a 911 caller reported a “sketchy” Black man walking down the street in a ski mask, waving his arms. McClain was unarmed and not suspected of committing any crimes.

His death sparked massive racial justice protests in Colorado in 2020 and spurred state lawmakers to pass a series of criminal justice reform bills. After prosecutors initially declined to file charges against the officers and paramedics, Gov. Jared Polis .

The court’s decision Thursday reaffirmed what Black leaders have long known about America’s justice system, they said during Friday’s news conference. , a 14-year-old Black boy who was lynched in 1955 after offending a white woman in a grocery store, “warned us about what happened to Elijah McClain,” Shofner said. So did , a 15-year-old shot in 1991 in Los Angeles by a convenience store owner.

“Yet we are supposed to believe that we are in a post-racist society,” Shofner said. She recalled the thousands of people who took to the streets in 2020, rallying for racial justice. The problem, Shofner said, “is that we confuse progress for permanence.”

“So I have to ask myself,” she said. “Where did all the good allies go?”

Veronica Seabron knows all too well what McClain’s mother is going through. Her son Jalin, in February 2025, was killed after being shot nine times in the back by a Douglas County deputy. The district attorney declined to file charges against the deputy.

The court’s ruling Thursday “punched me in the stomach,” Seabron said.

“Behind every reopened case is a mother,” she said. “This isn’t just a case number or a headline.”

Seabron wore black, red and white to the news conference — black to remember the lives lost; red to symbolize the bloodshed; and white for the purity of the deceased’s souls.

Shofner said the community stands ready to launch protests once again. The systems, she said, have simply not done enough.

“Our demands are clear; our demands are reasonable,” Shofner said. “We will be watching.”

Aware — and annoyed — that he’d been nabbed for exceeding the 35 mph speed limit, Anderson didn’t realize the monthslong legal quagmire in which he would soon be embroiled. It’s one that echoes an all-too-familiar battle pitting the .

When the 44-year-old computer repair specialist received his ticket in the mail, it said he had 30 days to pay it or challenge it. Through deft use of the artificial intelligence chatbot Claude, Anderson dug into state law. He found that in 2023, the state legislature had that stipulated that the response time given to motorists caught by speed cameras “not be less than forty-five days after the issuance date on the notice of the violation.”

With that, Anderson hit on a legal discrepancy that he felt obligated Aurora to void his $40 ticket. And not only his ticket.

“I’m not against safety,” he said, “but if you want everyone to follow the laws, you need to follow the laws, too. I’m really hoping they have to refund the fines to those that got a 30-day notice.”

Through a public records request this week, The Denver Post learned that Aurora had issued 26,268 speeding tickets to motorists since the city began enforcement through its automated photo safety program in late December. As of May 31, it had collected $627,000. Around 60% of violators had paid their tickets, the city said.

“If you have a program that’s going to make you millions over the next few years, you should be able to follow proper procedure,” Anderson said.

He noted that the city’s has a link to the very state law he’s holding up in his defense.

Anderson requested a hearing to dispute the ticket within the 30 days allotted. A magistrate commended Anderson for his gumshoe research into the matter — “You did a good job and you’re making the city work,” she told him during the April 30 appeal — but she refused to dismiss the ticket.

The city agreed with the magistrate, telling The Post this week that Aurora is a home-rule municipality, “meaning the city has the constitutionally protected right to make local decisions at the local level.”

“The 30-day timeline between issuance and due date on these fine-only, civil violations is an example of the city exercising said authority,” said Jennifer Soules, an Aurora spokeswoman.

That’s not how two sponsors of the 2023 bill see it.

Former state Rep. Leslie Herod, a Denver Democrat, said the 45-day response period was deliberately inserted in the law to give violators a reasonable amount of time to both receive and respond to the ticket.

“Forty-five days was put in there intentionally, and Aurora should follow the law,” she said.

Outgoing state Rep. Meg Froelich, an Englewood Democrat, said the legislature saw the use of speed camera systems as a matter of “statewide concern” that would give localities little discretion on enforcement.

The first paragraph of the bill says so — adding that the “enforcement of traffic laws through the use of automated vehicle identification systems … is an area in which uniform state standards are necessary.”

“We were trying to balance people’s civil liberties with the push for traffic safety and saving lives,” she said. “We would hope the municipalities would enforce it to the letter of the law.”

Lawmakers, Froelich said, wanted to make sure that people who might work in another location in today’s work-anywhere environment had adequate time to collect their mail and respond.

“Fifteen (extra) days may not seem like much to Aurora, but it may be for this guy,” she said.

The underpinnings of the dispute over Anderson’s speeding ticket have flared often in Colorado, where state lawmakers gave towns and cities the ability to enact . The problem that repeatedly arises is the conflicting interpretations of how the state or the cities wield their respective powers.

“There’s always been tension between state decisions and local sovereignty, and that won’t go away,” said Robert Preuhs, a political science professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. “If the driver wants to pursue this, it will come down to the courts.”

That’s where two recent prominent home-rule and state preemption cases landed.

Last year, six metro Denver cities sued Gov. Jared Polis over the enforcement of several housing laws that require municipalities to take steps to increase housing density. The plaintiff cities, including Aurora, claimed that the state laws encroached on their local home-rule authority to oversee land-use matters. The case is ongoing.

And in the waning days of 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court handed down a ruling forbidding cities from punishing lawbreakers beyond what state courts would allow for the same offense. The justices ruled that when a municipal ordinance and a state statute prohibit identical conduct, the municipal penalties for such conduct “may not exceed the corresponding state penalties for that conduct.”

Preuhs said it was not totally clear who had the legal advantage in the Aurora speeding ticket case. But if he had to bet, he would give the edge to Aurora.

“Given the civil nature of it and the power of cities to set speed limits and enforce them, it wouldn’t surprise me that they would have the power to set a reasonable time frame for a response to a ticket,” he said.

Questions about the terms and conditions of speeding tickets issued by radar-activated cameras will only increase as the technology proliferates. Local governments in at least 27 cities and towns in Colorado have approved automated speed camera enforcement.

The Colorado Department of Transportation‘s first speed cams on Interstate 25 north of metro Denver caught more than 4,000 drivers speeding between Mead and Berthoud in March. Denver expects to install its first fixed cameras along high-accident stretches of Alameda Avenue and Federal Boulevard later this year, adding to the four photo radar speed vans that police move around the city.

Anderson, who did pay his $40 fine after his appeal failed, doesn’t know what his next steps will be with Aurora.

Municipal leaders in the Weld County town of Kersey voted in January to refund thousands of dollars it overcharged drivers caught by its speed cameras, according to . While the situation in Aurora is different, Anderson could envision a class-action lawsuit arising from all of the drivers who paid their $40 fine but didn’t have enough time to formally lodge an appeal.

He to tell his story.

“I’m not going to stop,” he said. “There’s a lot more road to go down.”

Tell us what you think about this story

McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who was unarmed and not suspected of committing any crime, died after Aurora police put him in a neck hold and a paramedic injected him with an overdose of ketamine, a sedative.

Peter Cichuniec was supervising Jeremy Cooper, the paramedic who injected the drug, and both were convicted in 2023 of criminally negligent homicide in McClain’s death. Cichuniec was also convicted on one count of second-degree assault for unlawful administration of drugs.

Now, the Colorado Court of Appeals has ruled that the cases should be retried.

“We conclude that the district court erred by failing to properly instruct the jury on the standard of care applicable to the criminally negligent homicide charge and that the error wasn’t harmless,” wrote in the .

Jones also that reversed Cichuniec’s homicide conviction, but upheld his second-degree assault by drugging conviction.

The jury was told that “a person acts ‘with criminal negligence’ when, through a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise, he fails to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a result will occur or that a circumstance exists,” Jones wrote.

But, when jurors asked for a definition or description of the “standard of care,” the court did not provide one, Jones wrote. When the jury doesn’t understand an element of the charged offense, “the court must clarify the matter concretely and unambiguously,” he wrote.

“The relevant circumstances in this case were that a medical professional provided medical treatment to a person needing medical attention while under law enforcement¶¶Òőap physical restraint,” Jones wrote. “The standard of care was therefore that which would apply in a civil case involving such a situation — one applicable to a reasonable paramedic in Aurora, Colorado, in 2019 treating a person in Mr. McClain’s condition.

“Indeed, it wouldn’t make any sense to apply an ordinary reasonable person standard in this context,” Jones continued.

Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement that bringing the cases to trial in 2023 was the right thing to do for justice and for McClain and the community.

“A jury convicted two paramedics for the death of Elijah McClain, an innocent Black man who did nothing wrong that tragic night seven years ago,” Weiser said. “The attorney general’s office is committed to defending these convictions through the appeals process. Justice demands it.”

Attorneys for Cichuniec and Cooper did not respond to a request for comment on the court’s ruling. McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, and her attorney also did not respond to a request for comment.

Denver-based advocacy group Epitome for Black Excellence and Partnership said in a Thursday statement that the court’s ruling was far more than a legal development.

“For Black communities across Colorado and throughout this nation, it is the reopening of a wound that has never fully healed. It is a reminder that even when evidence is seen, even when harm is acknowledged, even when the world bears witness to tragedy, accountability remains painfully fragile,” organizers said.

Elijah McClain walked into a convenience store on Aug. 24, 2019, and bought a few cans of iced tea. The store security cameras showed him wearing a black ski mask and headphones, paying for his tea and dancing with his arms raised in the parking lot.  Family members said that McClain often wore masks when outside because he got cold easily due to his anemia.

Soon after he left the store, a 911 caller reported a “sketchy” Black man walking fast down the street while wearing a black ski mask and waving his arms.

Aurora police officers confronted McClain shortly after 10 p.m. that night and tried to physically restrain him when he continued walking. One officer put McClain in a carotid control hold — applying pressure to the neck with the biceps and forearm — and McClain temporarily lost consciousness. When he regained consciousness, he told the officers he couldn’t breathe and vomited, prompting them to call for paramedics.

Based on the officers’ descriptions of McClain and his actions, Cooper and Cichuniec decided that McClain showed symptoms of “excited delirium” and agreed to inject him with ketamine. Critics say that the condition is unscientific and rooted in racism.

McClain went into cardiac arrest while in the ambulance and stopped breathing. Paramedics restored his pulse with CPR, but McClain was declared brain-dead at the hospital a few days later.

Cichuniec testified during his trial that he and Cooper overestimated McClain’s weight and gave McClain a too-high dose of ketamine. Cooper estimated McClain weighed 220 pounds, and Cichuniec estimated he weighed 187 pounds. McClain’s actual weight was only 143 pounds.

The 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office initially declined to file charges against Cooper, Cichuniec or any of the police officers, but Gov. Jared Polis issued an executive order directing the Colorado attorney general to investigate and prosecute on the state’s behalf.

Cichuniec’s 5-year prison sentence was wiped away in September 2024 by Adams County District Court Judge Mark Warner, who converted the prison time into four years of probation. Warner had sentenced Cichuniec to the mandatory minimum required under Colorado law for an assault conviction, but reduced the sentence after Cichuniec argued that his case involved “unusual and exceptional” circumstances.

Cooper and former Aurora police officer Randy Roedema, who was also convicted of criminally negligent homicide in McClain’s death, were sentenced to 14 months of work-release. Two other Aurora police officers were indicted in McClain’s death, Jason Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard, but both were acquitted.

McClain’s death sparked statewide protests during the summer of 2020. Thousands joined the Colorado marches amid a national wave of protest movements and calls for police reform triggered by the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.

The city of Aurora also agreed to pay $15 million to McClain’s parents to settle a lawsuit over his death and entered into a consent decree to reform the police and fire departments.

Colorado State Patrol troopers responded to the crash on southbound E-470 near 48th Avenue at about 6:19 a.m. Thursday, after a 34-year-old man “intentionally jumped” in front of a Chevrolet Silverado truck, according to a news release from the agency.

The man died at the scene of the crash and will be identified by the Adams County Coroner’s Office.

“This investigation is early in the process, and it is unknown at this time what led to the incident,” state patrol officials stated in the release.

As of 9:10 a.m., southbound E-470 had reopened between mile marker 23 near 38th Avenue and mile marker 24 near 48th Avenue, E-470 spokesperson Shelby Costello said in an email to The Denver Post.

Additional information about the crash was not available on Thursday.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Andrews, 42, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor and was sentenced to 10 days in jail, which will be served at home, 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Eric Ross said.

The Denver District Attorney’s Office was the special prosecutor assigned to the case, and prosecutors dismissed another misdemeanor DUI charge and two traffic infractions as part of the plea agreement.

A district court judge also sentenced Andrews to 12 months on probation and 48 hours of community service.

The councilman was arrested by Aurora police after he was seen driving erratically near South Chambers Road and South Chambers Circle the night of Jan. 17.

Andrews told officers he was trying to find his son’s car to jump-start it, but the officers noticed he smelled of alcohol and had pink, watery eyes, police wrote in an arrest report.

He agreed to a breathalyzer test, which showed his breath alcohol level was .252, more than three times the legal limit of .08 for driving under the influence in Colorado.

In a statement after his arrest, Andrews said he took full responsibility and apologized.

Andrews’s attorney, Danny Luneau with the Denver firm Fife Luneau, on Tuesday reiterated that Andrews takes full responsibility for what happened and believes this is the appropriate resolution.

Aurora officers responded to the fatal crash near East Iliff Avenue and South Idalia Street at 11:49 p.m. Saturday, according to a news release from the police department. That intersection is on the edge of Aurora’s .

An unidentified man and woman were riding a motorcycle west on East Iliff Avenue when they were hit by an eastbound Honda CR-V turning left onto South Idalia Street, police said.

Paramedics took both motorcycle riders to the hospital, where the man later died. He will be identified by the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office.

Aurora police officials initially said the motorcycle had been reported stolen out of California but later learned otherwise. The VIN of the motorcycle involved in the crash nearly matched the VIN of an identical motorcycle that had been reported stolen, causing a national database used by investigators to link the two together, police said.

As of May 31, the woman injured in the crash remained hospitalized, police said.

The Honda driver fled the scene, and investigators later found the unoccupied car abandoned a short distance away from the crash, police said. No suspects had been publicly identified or arrested as of Sunday.

The crash remains under investigation, but police said speed may have been a factor.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Updated 8:55 a.m. June 17, 2026: Because of incorrect information from a source, a previous version of this article misreported that the motorcycle involved in the crash had been stolen. The Denver Post updated the story when the source corrected that assessment, confirming the motorcycle had not been stolen. 

Rajon Belt-Stubblefield, 37, was killed by Officer Matthew Neely on Aug. 30 after Neely tried to pull him over for speeding near East Sixth Avenue and Sable Boulevard. Aurora police said Belt-Stubblefield crashed into two vehicles while trying to evade the stop.

In the wake of the shooting, Police Chief Todd Chamberlain blamed Belt-Stubblefield for the confrontation, highlighting that he tossed a gun into the grass after he got out of his car, did not follow police orders and continued to walk toward Neely.

But Belt-Stubblefield’s family has said Neely’s body camera shows Neely first initiated the confrontation by grabbing Belt-Stubblefield by the back of the neck to try to take him to the ground.

Family members previously said they intend to sue the city for Belt-Stubblefield’s death.

The on Friday said the case is being referred to a grand jury for further investigation.

The 18th Judicial District¶¶Òőap Critical Incident Response Team has completed an investigation, and the district attorney’s office reviewed those records, agency officials said.

Colorado district attorneys usually publish to explain why they are or are not filing criminal charges against the involved officers, including whether an officer’s use of force was justified legally .

“The grand jury is a separate and independent investigative body,” the said Friday. “It will review evidence, conduct any additional investigation it deems appropriate, and ultimately determine whether probable cause exists for the filing of formal criminal charges.”

The Aurora Police Department has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks, with the City Council narrowly passing a measure to limit the publication of booking photos and require city approval for the agency’s social media posts and news releases.

And an independent monitor who oversees court-ordered reforms to the department on Wednesday called for city officials to review three recent police shootings in which officers killed people who were experiencing a mental health crisis.