At around 2:30 a.m. on January 1, the Denver Police Department responded to a shooting in the 1400 block of Market that was later determined to have occurred when someone shot a gun from within the Orchid into the street, injuring a man named Jacion Pope.
Because of the circumstances surrounding the shooting, the Denver Department of Excise & Licenses issued a show-cause order on February 28 requiring the Orchid to testify as to why the club should keep its licenses despite allowing disorderly conduct on the premises.
The order accused the Orchid of violating seven state or local laws, though the parties cleared up three of those violations prior to the June 27 hearing.
The Orchid was supposed to open in 2022 as a high-end jazz venue called LIV Denver; the owner told the city that he expected most patrons to be over 55. Instead, the bar opened in 2023 as the Orchid without ever being called LIV publicly. At the time, owners still billed the venue as a 1920s-style jazz supper club.
Since then, though, the business appears to have transitioned to a full-on nightclub, advertising events like "Lit Wednesday" on Instagram. The change in business name and style was not registered with the city; to change the trade name without going through official city channels is a breach of local law and the Orchid admitted to that error at the hearing. At the same time, the city agreed to dismiss allegations of allowing employees to drink inside after hours.
So now, all that is in question is what happened the night of the shooting — and whether the Orchid’s response merits a sanction from the city.
“There's piles of circumstantial evidence to show that an employee or agent of the licensee permitted the disorderly conduct,” Hayley Swestka, assistant city attorney, said at the hearing.
New Year's Day Shooting and Robbery Incidents
Video footage from New Year’s Day shows a bullet being fired from within the club into Pope’s chest. Pope was fleeing the scene of a reported attempted robbery in the nearby P.F. Chang’s parking lot, pursuing a robbery victim who had taken refuge inside the Orchid.Pope called for medical assistance after the shooting. The DPD located Pope and an alleged accomplice, Joe Alexander, outside the P.F. Chang’s.
Pope and Alexander had allegedly attempted to rob a third person of a chain necklace, placing a gun to his head and hitting him with the gun. After he was struck, the man with the chain is seen on cameras running toward the Orchid with Pope and Alexander in pursuit, according to a video played at the hearing.
“On camera, as Mr. Pope is standing in the front of the Club, the door is opened and a muzzle flash from a gun is seen,” the city's show-cause order states. “Someone inside the Club had fired a gun and shot Mr. Pope in the chest.”
Pope is currently being held at the Downtown Detention Center, according to the Denver Sheriff Department Inmate Search, and has a hearing on August 4. Only Pope has been arrested; whoever shot Pope has not been discovered, nor has the robbery victim. According to Jaramillo, the robbery victim stayed in the club for around ten minutes until police responded with sirens and then walked out.
According to Jaramillo’s testimony, while the robbery victim easily entered the Orchid, when Alexander tried to enter the club he could not, indicating the door was unlocked when the victim entered the building and then he locked it against Alexander and Pope. The door was unlocked and opened again when Pope was shot.
Jaramillo testified that the Orchid appeared to be the intended destination of the victim, as he did not try the doors of any other buildings.
“It looks like a direct path straight to the Orchid nightclub,” Jaramillo said.
Another thing putting the Orchid liquor license in jeopardy is that employees allegedly did not cooperate with the police investigation. No one associated with the Orchid called 911 to report the shooting, despite a gun being shot from within the nightclub, DPD officers testified at the hearing. According to Swestka, that is a breach of city law.
“When there is some type of disorderly conduct, that must be reported to law enforcement by the licensee — and that did not occur,” Swestka said. “In this case, the shooting occurred inside the Orchid.”
Throughout the hearing, Mark Lukehart, the Orchid’s attorney, maintained that it's possible no employee was aware of the gunshot, as the basement is akin to a “dungeon” lined with bricks that reaches almost to 15th Street underground. Swestka said she found the idea that no one heard the gunshot unlikely.
“Unlike in video games and the movies, gunshots are deafening,” Jaramillo testified. “When you shoot a gun, everyone knows.”
Jaramillo also said he asked for a list of employees during his investigation and was never provided with one.
Don Whyde, a DPD officer who responded to the incident on January 1, spoke to a manager at the Orchid that night to ask for any surveillance footage. The manager said he didn’t have access to the footage but would go find someone who did; he never returned to the door, according to Whyde’s testimony.
However, Lukehart pointed out that none of the evidence indicates an employee shot the gun or was involved in the gunshot incident directly, arguing it is more likely that the robbery victim fired the gun.
“We don't think there's been any violation or any evidence to show disorderly conduct by an employee,” Lukehart said. “Isn't it as equally possible, or maybe more so, that the alleged shooting victim was the person with the gun?”
Lukehart then asked why the DPD wouldn’t have investigated the employees for the shooting or deemed the Orchid a crime scene if officers believed an employee perpetrated the shooting.
DPD Misunderstanding Leads to Lack of Evidence
According to Jaramillo, officers originally did not know the Orchid was where the shot originated as the 911 call had been made from the 1400 block of Market. Additionally, several rounds of bullets had been dislodged during the pistol-whipping incident in the P.F. Chang’s parking lot, creating confusion for officers arriving on the scene.There was some blood outside the Orchid, but no other evidence that something had occurred there until the DPD got access to footage several days later. Had the DPD known immediately that the shot came from inside the Orchid, the investigation would have proceeded differently, Jaramillo said.
“Everyone would have been vacated from the nightclub,” Jaramillo said. “It would have been taped off and secured for a pending search warrant for any physical and digital evidence inside.”
That DPD’s unawareness of the Orchid’s involvement is also how whoever shot the gun was able to get away, Jaramillo said.
“If officers knew that that was the scene of the shooting, there would have been a cop car pulled up right up there to figure out what's going on, try to preserve the scene,” Jaramillo said.
Swestka argued that if anyone from the Orchid had reported the gunshot, the police would have been able to properly conduct their investigation from the start rather than initially focusing on the P.F. Chang’s area.
“The lack of cooperation that was received from the people that were there in the Orchid, the employees that were there, led pretty directly to the delay in the police's investigation,” Swestka said. “They were not able to treat the Orchid as a crime scene when they initially got there, and that led to a delay in collecting evidence that led to a delay and not being able to find a firearm that was used.”
Lukehart argued that the fact blood was found outside the Orchid should have been enough to trigger further investigation, but instead responding officers did not attempt to gain entry into the club or interview employees beyond asking for surveillance footage.
The Orchid Could Close for Three Weeks
Regardless of whether an Orchid employee perpetrated the shooting, Swestka concluded, it is clear the Orchid did not comply with Denver’s regulations.“A reasonable licensee would have been aware of someone entering their establishment after hours and would have been aware that a shooting occurred on the premises,” she said.
According to Swestka, the city attorney’s office wants Excise & Licenses to enact a 21-day closure of the Orchid — with a stipulation that if the Orchid violates city license terms or ordinances again, the club could be closed for six months. She added that the city attorney’s office has requested certain conditions on the license, which the hearing officer agreed to review outside of the hearing.
Lukehart asked that the 21 days be broken up over a certain time period rather than occurring consecutively, saying that Dawit Zeleke, primary principal for the business, also owns the building and would lose out substantially with a 21-day closure.
“That would be an overly harsh result,” Lukehart said. “They've never had any problems before at all.”
Though he acknowledged that some neighbors do not get along with the business, he said those issues were not in question at this hearing.
Hearing officer Ryan Brand will deliver a recommended decision to Molly Duplechian, executive director of Excise & Licenses in the coming weeks; Duplechian will consider the decision and issue her final order after that.
In the meantime, the Orchid is open.
