The shooting happened at Parliament Apartments, 4363 South Quebec St., just before 2 a.m. as officers were responding to a 911 call about a possible carjacking, Chief Ron Thomas said in a briefing.

Police officers saw a man matching witness descriptions and challenged him, Thomas said. He responded by firing once at officers, and one officer fired multiple shots in return, hitting the suspect.

Officers started life-saving measures after the suspect went down, and the person was taken to a hospital, Thomas said.

He was as of 12:19 p.m., Denver police said in a post on X.

UPDATE: Briefing regarding officer-involved shooting at 4363 S. Quebec St.

— Denver Police Dept. (@DenverPolice)

Denver’s homicide unit, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the State Patrol are investigating the shooting.

The man’s name will be released by the medical examiner’s office.

Officers arrested Rayzjuan Curry on suspicion of first-degree murder in the shooting death of 26-year-old Torin Fluker.

Police responded to the and found Fluker with gunshot wounds,  the agency said. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Investigators identified Curry as a suspect through interviews and surveillance video and believe he knew Fluker and that the two “were engaged in a verbal altercation” before the shooting.

He is in custody at the Downtown Detention Center, according to jail records. His next court date was not available Friday.

The Denver Police Department near East Ninth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard at 9:43 p.m. Tuesday. A car hit a motorcycle near the intersection, on the edge of Denver’s Congress Park and Hale neighborhoods, and sent the motorcyclist to the hospital, police said.

Information about the hit-and-run car and driver was not available Wednesday.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The federal court agreed that the city is liable for “unconstitutional force” used by Denver Police Department and other officers against 12 protesters during the demonstrations between May 28 and June 2, 2020.

The protesters sustained a range of injuries, from inhaling tear gas to hearing loss from flash-bang grenades and being hit by rubber bullets and pepper balls. One protester’s skull was fractured and neck broken when Denver police shot him in the head with a lead-filled Kevlar bag, according to court records.

Evidence from the 15-day trial showed Denver police officers and officers from other jurisdictions “excessively and indiscriminately used less-lethal munitions against peaceful protesters,” the court wrote Tuesday.

After the 2022 trial, the jury awarded the group monetary damages — $3 million to the protester who had the worst injuries, $1 million each to 10 of the protesters and $750,000 to the 12th protester.

But Denver officials appealed the jury’s verdict and argued that the lower court made a slew of mistakes during the trial, including giving incorrect guidance to the jury on legal theories and allowing testimony from the city’s independent monitor, who issued a 94-page investigative report on the police department’s actions during the protests.

Denver officials also argued that there was not enough evidence to support the claims that the city’s failure to train officers caused officers to violate protesters constitutional rights.

“We reject Denver’s arguments and uphold the jury’s verdict,” the court wrote. “We do so based specifically on the jury’s finding that Denver inadequately trained its officers.”

In an email Wednesday morning, Denver City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Melissa Sisneros said the office is reviewing the court’s decision and evaluating next steps.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and attorneys for the protesters applauded the court’s decision in statements Tuesday.

“This outcome is monumental and should be a lesson to law enforcement across the country. No police officer or municipality can escape accountability for their violence against people exercising their sacred right to peacefully protest,” said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado’s legal director.

Attorney Elizabeth Wang with the law firm Loevy + Loevy said the group is pleased the court “denied Denver’s attempts to shirk responsibility for the abuses of its officers.”

Wang, who represented five of the protesters, added that the compensation was an important part of the case.

“But more important is the message this sends to the city of Denver and police forces across the country: The police cannot use excessive force against peaceful demonstrators whose message they disagree with,” she said in a statement.

The appeals court on Tuesday also upheld a related ruling that Denver police Officer Jonathan Christian used excessive force against former state Rep. Elisabeth Epps when he shot her with a pepper ball while she was crossing the street during the 2020 protests.

The court agreed with the jury’s finding that Christian violated Epps’ Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force against her, the court wrote.

Christian initially was ordered to pay Epps $250,000 in punitive damages, but the judge later reduced that amount to $50,000. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Stephen Martinez is no longer a convicted murderer.

Denver District Judge Andrew Luxen erased his conviction Tuesday and ordered that Martinez, 58, be immediately freed from prison, where he has spent the last 27 years behind bars, convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 death of 4-month-old Heather Mares.

After vacating the conviction, the judge took the additional step of dismissing the murder charge against Martinez, ending the criminal case against him entirely.

Luxen addressed Kim Estrada, Heather’s mother, directly as he dismissed the charges. She stood weeping in the courtroom’s gallery after begging the judge not to set Martinez free.

“I want you to know this is not an easy decision, and I feel for you and your family,” he told her.

Then he dropped the case. Martinez did not visibly react when the conviction was vacated and the case dismissed. Some of his family members dabbed their eyes. He was released from custody Tuesday afternoon.

Martinez’s freedom comes after attorneys with the , an organization within the that provides free legal services to people who claim to be wrongfully convicted, took on his case about four years ago.

The attorneys found that Heather’s injuries — originally attributed to Martinez violently shaking the infant — were actually caused by a severe lung infection that ultimately caused her heart to stop. They presented the findings of several experts to Denver District Attorney John Walsh roughly 18 months ago.

“All of which credibly asserted that the cause of death in this case was pneumonia, and not abuse,” Walsh said after Tuesday’s hearing. “Our conviction review unit took that information and did an independent investigation with independent medical experts, which largely verified those prior events — in other words, that the cause of death either was pneumonia, or likely was pneumonia.”

Prosecutors ultimately agreed the conviction should be wiped away because Martinez’s original attorneys failed to present evidence of Heather’s lung disease during his original jury trial in 2000, leaving jurors with no explanation for the baby’s injures except abuse.

Prosecutors then sought to drop the case because they do not believe they could prove Martinez killed Heather if the case were to go to trial today, Walsh said.

“It is clear based on this new evidence that Stephen Martinez did not cause her death,” Martinez’s attorney, Jeanne Segil, said in court Tuesday.

Heather’s family strongly objected to the decision and said in court that they still believe Martinez killed the baby.

“I beg you from our family to yours, if you have one, please don’t let this animal out in the street,” Estrada told the judge. “He doesn’t deserve it and neither do we.”

Martinez was dating Estrada in 1998 and was alone with the baby for 15 minutes at their home in the 400 block of South Pecos Street on Oct. 17, 1998, when he called 911 to report that Heather was choking. She died later that day at a hospital.

Further investigation showed that the baby had suffered a skull fracture, ruptured blood vessels in her eyes, brain bleeding and swelling. At the time, medical and child abuse experts saw that triad of injuries as tell-tale signs of child abuse, but now, experts recognize that many other situations can also cause those injuries, his attorneys wrote in a petition for post-conviction relief.

Heather had ongoing respiratory issues from the time she was born, Martinez’s attorneys found, and the lung infection caused the symptoms previously attributed to abuse by Martinez. The skull fracture was likely caused when Martinez tripped while holding Heather a couple weeks before her death, the attorneys found.

On the night he was arrested, Martinez confessed to shaking Heather and banging her head against a crib, but later recanted that confession. His attorneys believe it was a false confession, and said the physical evidence in the case doesn’t match up with Martinez’s description.

“He had never been in trouble with the police before, he had never been interrogated, and that night after making the same statements four times explaining that the baby had choked, telling them — four different times — the truth, eventually he made a false confession and said that he had shaken the baby,” Segil said. “We now know today that that was false.”

Estrada dismissed the notion that the confession was false and said she worries that Martinez will hurt someone after his release.

“She could not stand up for herself, she could not fight back, she couldn’t do anything,” Estrada said. “She was an innocent 4-month-old baby… He is the one who confessed that he did it. He is the one who said he did it. He wasn’t under any distress, he wasn’t told what say. He has shown no remorse, no nothing about taking our daughter, our only daughter, away from a family who would have enjoyed her life.”

Walsh said erasing Martinez’s murder conviction is an example of the criminal justice system working.

“We do not do this lightly,” Walsh said. “It’s our job, in the DA’s office to seek justice in every single case, and that means sometimes we have to do the right thing even when it is painful, even when it is difficult to do. And that is exactly what this case is.”

United Airlines flight 2408 was scheduled to depart DIA at 5:58 p.m. Sunday, . But passengers exited the plane down airstairs soon after the flight left the Denver airport gate, before the plane took off, United spokesperson Russell Carlton wrote in an email to The Denver Post.

“The aircraft was screened and cleared, and passengers returned to the gate where we provided them with food and water,” Carlton said.

DIA staff and the Denver Police Department both responded to the reported bomb threat, an airport spokesperson confirmed.

Denver law enforcement is working with the FBI to investigate the threat, according to the police department. No additional information about the bomb threat was available on Monday.

“Any threat or hoax threat can potentially be a federal crime, including threats to critical infrastructure such as airport operations,” FBI Denver Public Affairs Officer Vikki Migoya said. “No dangerous materials were located on the aircraft. The investigation into the source of the threat is ongoing.”

None of the 200 passengers or seven United crew members was injured. The plane safely left for the Washington Dulles International Airport at 11:33 p.m. Sunday, Carlton said — nearly six hours after its scheduled departure time.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Officers responded to an armed robbery near the intersection of West Gunnison Drive and South Zuni Street at 1:04 p.m. and issued a shelter-in-place order for a one-block radius after two suspects fled into a nearby home, Denver Police Department spokesperson Siena Riley said.

Police arrested the two suspects and sent follow up alert to lift the shelter in place at 1:50 p.m., which was accidentally sent to everyone, Riley said.

No one was injured in the robbery.

In a post on X, officials said the all-clear alert was “inadvertently sent out further than intended.”

“Denver Police are working with the Department of Safety/Denver 911 to identify what happened,” agency officials wrote in social media.

A similar alert was mistakenly sent citywide in January for a person who was barricaded near the University of Denver.

The Denver Police Department first posted about on social media around 3:42 a.m., where they reported that the victim took themselves to a hospital.

The person later died, and the shooting is now being investigated as a homicide. Police say updates will be posted when made available.

The social media posts did not specify the victim’s age or gender or how many times they had been shot.

This is a developing story and may be updated. 

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.

The lawsuit filed by Denver firm Newman McNulty in U.S. District Court on Tuesday described the 2024 arrests as the latest in a yearslong pattern of Denver Police Department officers violating the civil rights of protesters, including using force that left some with permanent injuries.

When Denver teacher Margaret Gutberlet arrived at the quad on April 26, 2024, to protest the war in Gaza, she joined other protesters sitting on the grass and linked arms to engage “in peaceful political expression at a public forum for free speech,” her attorneys wrote in the complaint.

Gutberlet¶¶Òőap attorneys allege Denver police and Auraria campus officials retaliated specifically against the anti-war protesters, and rather than work with organizers to remove tents or move to the sidewalk so they could continue protesting, “broadly prohibited all speech on campus.”

While Auraria officials said protesters were removed for violating the encampment policy, police continued to arrest protesters, including Gutberlet, after the tents were taken down, the lawsuit states.

Gutlerbert was arrested on suspicion of trespassing and failing to follow a lawful order, taken to jail and held for more than 12 hours before she was released, her attorneys wrote. The charges were later dropped.

In a statement, Auraria spokesperson Devra Ashby said the campus has not been served with the lawsuit and was not aware of it.

“The Auraria Campus strongly supports civic engagement and the right to peaceable assembly within the parameters of the law and campus policy,” Ashby said in an email. “We are equally committed to fostering an inclusive and respectful environment where all individuals feel safe and valued, regardless of background or belief.”

The lawsuit also alleges the Denver Police Department did not follow a series of recommendations from the city’s police watchdog after the 2020 George Floyd protests and failed to take action that would prevent the protesters’ constitutional rights from being violated in the future.

As a result, Denver and Auraria police “conducted a mass arrest of peaceful protesters without probable cause, without body-worn camera footage sufficient to document the basis for individual arrests, and without any assessment of whether the individuals being arrested had actually violated any law,” according to the complaint.

A spokesperson for the city attorney’s office declined to comment on the pending litigation.

The lawsuit claims 10 violations of state and federal law, including retaliation, unlawful arrest, unlawful seizure, malicious prosecution and conspiracy and seeks an unspecified amount of money for damages.

Updated 11:41 a.m. April 16, 2025: Because of a reporter’s error, a previous version of this story misreported date another lawsuit was filed by protesters. The lawsuit was filed in April 2025.