Julio Murillo and his family brought all the kids outside when they heard a loud popping noise a little before 11 on a Wednesday night last month.
The family stood in the front yard of their home in Denver’s Globeville neighborhood and scanned the sky for fireworks, which had continued in the area for more than a week after the Fourth of July — a fun summer treat for the kids.
Murillo and his family didn’t realize the noise was gunfire until police came up to the house and yelled at them to all go inside. Moments earlier, officers and a suspect on the run had exchanged gunfire in a warehouse area 200 yards from the family’s home.
The family went inside and watched the police search their neighborhood, flashlights illuminating alleys and corners.
“It was scary,” Murillo said a day after the July 13 shooting. “Everyone feels vulnerable right now.”
The Washington Street shooting was the second of seven shootings in Denver that week. In total, three people were shot and killed and five others wounded — another deadly week in a city where shootings have become a near-daily occurrence. Two of the shootings involved police firing their guns and another was a self-inflicted injury, but the gunshots terrified neighbors just the same.
Denver Post journalists went to the scene of every shooting that occurred in Denver between July 10 and 16 to gain a better understanding of how gun violence is affecting those closest to the threat. Beyond those injured, the gunfire left residents feeling unsafe in their own neighborhoods and caused workers to look for new jobs.
In the first six months of 2022, 43 people were shot and killed and 141 more were shot and injured in the city — a more than 80% increase from the average of the first six months of the three previous years.
The first bullets of the week flew in the parking lot of a south Denver apartment complex during an attempted robbery. The next three shootings all occurred in a 2-mile radius in the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods — the gunfight on Washington Street, a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a quiet neighborhood and the fatal police shooting of a man who was stabbing a woman. Within five hours that Friday night, a beloved community leader was shot and killed while unloading food in front of her apartment complex in the East Colfax neighborhood and three others were injured in shootings at Colfax Avenue gas stations.
Denverites living near the shooting scenes questioned whether it was safe to keep living in their homes, though many acknowledged they wouldn’t be able to pick up and move even if they wanted to. Other families wondered whether they should keep a closer eye on their children, or forbid them from going to the park.
Ana Valdez and her 12-year-old son Ayden stood outside their Elyria-Swansea home on July 15 and watched police investigate a shooting at a house across the street. They’ve lived in their home for six years, and it generally had been pretty quiet. Ayden was used to going by himself to the neighborhood recreation center and the park.
But the shooting and more frequent sounds of gunfire in recent years are making Valdez reconsider how much freedom Ayden should have. The shooting made Ayden a little nervous, he said, but not too nervous.
“I’m used to it a little bit,” the 12-year-old said of the sound of gunfire.
A shooting every day
The number of fatal and non-fatal shootings in Denver nearly doubled in the last five years, particularly since 2020. On average, a person was shot in Denver every day in the first half of 2022.
In the first six months of 2018, 31 people were shot and killed and 80 others were shot and injured — almost half the number of people shot in the first six months of 2022.
The increased violence pushed Denver police Chief Paul Pazen to add three more detectives to the homicide unit and three more detectives to the FAST Team, which investigates non-fatal shootings. They are the only two units in the department that remain fully staffed as the department deals with short staffing, Pazen said.
“We have to solve these shootings,” he said. “Even fully staffed, the increased workload, they probably need additional officers.”
Between Jan. 1, 2018, and June 30, 2022, at least 1,274 people were shot in Denver as gun violence escalated year over year, Denver police data collected by The Post shows. Of those victims, 287 died and 987 were wounded.
Denver was one of many major cities that saw violence skyrocket in 2020 and 2021 to highs not seen in years. However, both nationally and in Denver, the per-capita homicide rate remains far lower now than rates recorded in the early 1990s.
RELATED: Denver Homicide Report
Criminologists have pointed to the havoc COVID-19 wreaked on social and economic systems as well as isolation and general unrest as potential factors in the uptick in 2020 and 2021.
“A lot of the stressors that COVID exacerbated are also stressors that can lead to increased gun violence,” said Ari Davis, a policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
But Denver’s continued increase in shootings and homicides in 2022 contrasts with national trends, which indicate both are slightly less frequent across the country in 2022 than in 2021.
Pazen noted that other cities in Colorado, like Aurora and Commerce City, also have seen significant increases in violence. The state needs to evaluate legislation that has been enacted in recent years that reclassified some crimes, he said.
“We own the crime issue in Denver, and we’re going to work tirelessly to address the gun issues,” Pazen said, noting the department continues to take thousands of guns off the street every year. “I think we need to look bigger-picture. This is not ‘Denver has a crime problem and the rest of the state is rainbows and butterflies.’”
Pazen said that solving homicides and non-fatal shootings are one of the department’s top priorities. Despite the increase in violence, the department’s homicide clearance rate remains higher than many other departments in the country, he said.
Police arrested suspects in 24 of the 43 gun homicides so far this year, Denver police data shows. Warrants were issued in three other cases and prosecutors refused to file charges in two. Fifteen cases have not yet been solved.
Of the 141 people shot and injured in 2022, 41 have had their cases closed through an arrest — about one-third of all cases — and police have issued warrants in seven more. Seventy-six people haven’t seen an arrest in their case. The remaining cases were cleared without an arrest, refused by prosecutors or closed for other reasons.
“It’s important to solve those cases,” Pazen said. “You can tell the difference in a family who lost someone they loved when the case is closed compared to when a case is still open. The loss of a loved one is a pain that never goes away, but it’s worse when it’s not solved.”
Trauma to a larger community
Thirty-six bullets flew through the warehouse parking lot less than 100 yards from Mary Sweeney‘s Globeville home, keeping the 97-year-old awake in her bed just before midnight on July 13.
Five men in a car had fled a police stop in southwest Denver and ended up at the parking lot off of Washington Street, where at least one of them fired at pursuing officers. In total, the suspect shot at least five rounds and Denver police fired 31, eventually killing the suspect, 26-year-old Michael Silletto, after finding him hiding behind a dumpster.
But the incident wasn’t over. Officers for hours searched for two men who fled in the car, which police said was packed with drugs.
The shooting unnerved the families living on the short block of homes adjacent to the warehouse parking lot. Several of the families have lived there for decades. One man found a gun in his driveway the next morning.
Sweeney was in bed when heard the gunfire and the helicopter. The incident made her nervous, she said the next day. Just a week earlier, there was a shooting at the end of the street where she has lived for 70 years, she said.
“It’s been getting worse,” she said. “But I’ve been here for so many years.”
Gun violence impacts people even when they don’t know the shooter or the victim, said Davis, of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
“The wider community exposure to violence can be traumatizing,” he said. “That unaddressed trauma can lead to a wide range of health outcomes. People might not feel safe to walk down the street or go to school, so they’re staying inside, they’re becoming isolated.”
Shootings can also lead to fewer businesses opening in an area, which means fewer jobs. Gun violence exacerbates poor economic conditions, which is one of the risk factors for more shootings to occur, he said. Trauma begets trauma.
To Amber Berumen, the epidemic of gun violence in Denver seems inescapable.
She wasn’t surprised when a person was shot July 16 during an attempted robbery outside the Circle K gas station on West Colfax Avenue where she works.
Her brother was shot and killed Nov. 10 a block away on Osage Street while defending their sister from a friend. Ten days before his killing, someone else had been shot and injured in the Circle K parking lot. The injured man ended up lying on her sister’s car.
“It makes me sad,” she said. “This is the neighborhood I grew up in. It’s scary. I’m looking for another job.”
Berumen moved from the Lincoln Park neighborhood to Cherry Creek so that she and her children could be safer. Most of her family has also left the area.
“It makes me sad and it pisses me off because all these people with no self-control and messed up mind states and no respect for life, they carry these deadly weapons and in the blink of an eye take someone’s life,” she said.
Berumen and her family attended a candlelight vigil last week for a friend who had been killed on the streets. But she left fearing for her kids’ safety after two men got in a fight and a woman pulled out a gun.
“We didn’t even get to release the balloons,” she said.
“A killing ground”
Tanisha Lintz watched from her sixth-floor unit at Hidden Brook Apartments as police used flashlights to search for bullet casings in the park across the street. Below her, the body of Ma Kaing lay in front of the apartment building, uncovered in the light rain.
Kaing was unloading desserts for a catering order on July 15 when a stray bullet fired by someone in the park across the street struck her in the head, killing her in front of the apartment complex where she’d lived for more than a decade.
A beloved leader in the East Colfax neighborhood, Kaing was known for volunteering with the community food bank and helping other immigrants transition to life in Denver. Her still-unsolved killing sparked outrage in the community. Residents said for years police and city leaders have ignored their pleas for help to make their neighborhood safer.
Lintz has lived in Hidden Brook for nine years. Her grandkids are growing up there. She is afraid to let them go to the park across the street, which many residents identified as the place where violence brews.
“We need help out here,” she said. “We need help everywhere.”
Lintz and more than 50 of her neighbors packed into the basement of Hidden Brook a few weeks after Kaing’s killing to tell police and city leaders they felt unsafe and unheard. A succession of neighbors came to the microphone to speak. A photo of Kaing and two young men killed in the neighborhood hung behind the speakers. Toddlers played with toys while their parents cried listening to their neighbors explain the toll gun violence has taken on the community.
“This whole community is heavy with tears,” said Levon Lyles, program manager for the nonprofit Street Fraternity, which provides programming and support for young men in the East Colfax neighborhood.
Eight people have been killed in homicides in a three-block radius around Hidden Brook in the past five years, according to Denver police data collected by The Post.
“It’s a killing ground,” Kaing’s oldest son, Kyaw Oo, told city leaders at the meeting.
One of those killed, 27-year-old Zuwayidi “Goro” Byiringiro, worked as an ambassador for Street Fraternity before he was gunned down Feb. 11. He prepared meals for those who couldn’t afford them, helped at the food bank and worked with the young men who came to the organization for a safe, supportive environment.
Rukasa Claude, Byiringiro’s best friend, said Byiringiro went to get something at the store and was shot in an alley on the way back. Police arrested a teenager in his death.
Byiringiro and his mother moved to Denver from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for a safer life, like many other immigrants who live along East Colfax, Claude said.
But Denver doesn’t seem much safer than their old home. Now, Byiringiro’s mother has no family left in Colorado.
“I don’t see anything safer here,” Claude said. “We don’t know who is next.”
