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The rash of teen shootings that struck Aurora in late 2021 has continued in 2022. Saturday, January 8, saw two separate incidents with teen victims; no arrests have been announced.
The Aurora Police Department‘s report of the first shooting came via a message on its Twitter account, time-stamped at 3:37 p.m. on January 8: “We are investigating a report of shots fired at Montview Park 1901 Chester St. Crime scene has been located but no victim. Large police presence in the area. Possible suspect (no description) last seen running to the west at around 3:20 p.m.”
An update just over two hours later added details, noting that a male in the fifteen-to-sixteen-year-old age range “was dropped off by two unknown males at an ER of a local hospital in Aurora with a GSW [gun-shot wound] to the leg (non-life threatening). It is believed he is the victim from the earlier shots-fired call in Montview Park.”
That wasn’t the end of the youth violence for the day. At 9:48 p.m., the APD tweeted that it was “investigating a shooting that possibly occurred in the area of Village Green Park (1300 South Chambers Circle). Sixteen-year-old male dropped off at the ER of a local hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest. No info on what led up to the shooting. No suspect info available.”
Such reports have become commonplace in Aurora over recent months. During the early afternoon of November 15, following a bloody weekend that included the fatal gun-down of an eighteen-year-old on the 13000 block of East 33rd Place in Aurora the previous evening, six Aurora Central High School students were injured during a drive-by shooting at Nome Park, at 1200 Nome Street – just steps from the campus. The victims, who ranged in age from fourteen to eighteen, survived, and two fifteen-year-old suspects were arrested.
Three days later, on November 19, three teens were wounded in the parking lot of Aurora’s Hinkley High School (three sixteen-year-olds were charged as adults for the episode). A November 24 exchange of gunfire on South Addison Way left a teenager dead (Adam Holen, a former law enforcement officer, was arrested in December in connection with the incident); five people between the ages of sixteen and twenty were shot on the 1500 block of Dayton Street early on November 28. All told, fifteen Aurora youths were shot and one was killed over a two-week period.
The Dayton Street shooting took place less than a day after a prayer vigil focusing on youth violence that was attended by Mayor Mike Coffman and Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson – and December saw no additional teen shootings in Aurora. But the same can’t be said of January.
Anyone with information about any of these incidents can call Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-STOP (7867).
