Sixteen Mass Shootings Between Grocery Store Attacks in Boulder, Buffalo

For Coloradans, the May 14 shooting at a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, an attack that killed ten people, immediately brought back memories of the March 22, 2021, assault on a Boulder King Soopers in which ten people died. But plenty of tragedies have occurred in the state between then and now, including at least sixteen mass shootings — an average of more than one per month.

This information is culled from the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks violent episodes involving firearms across the country, including Colorado. GVA identifies a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people are injured or killed; like another major compiler, Mass Shooting Tracker, it places no additional restrictions on what qualifies. Other organizations define the term "mass shooting" differently, as noted in a 2018 RAND Corporation report. For instance, Mother Jones counts only so-called "indiscriminate" incidents with three or more fatalities other than the death of the shooter, and excludes crimes of armed robbery, gang violence or domestic violence. Likewise, Stanford University's Mass Shootings in America database skips shootings related to gangs, drugs or organized crime, but requires just three fatal or non-fatal injuries aside from the shooter.

But those who get hung up on these distinctions are at risk of missing the larger point about the frequency of multi-victim shootings — one underscored in the August 2019 post published in the immediate aftermath of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, which took a combined 31 lives. According to the Gun Violence Archive, Colorado suffered 24 mass shootings between the site's 2013 launch and the summer of 2019. That worked out to four a year.

The pace of Colorado mass shootings over the past year nearly quadruples that number — and because such episodes are so commonplace, few become dominant media stories. Most Coloradans may have a tough time remembering many of them beyond the King Soopers shooting, despite the elevated number of people hurt or slain.

Here are the sixteen mass shootings in Colorado between the grocery store shootings in Boulder and Buffalo, in reverse chronological order, complete with dates, locations, the number of people killed or injured, and links to additional coverage.

16. April 2, 2022
Colorado Springs
2500 block of Astrozon Circle and 2400 block of Barkman Drive
Four injured

Estevan Pacheco was taken into custody after allegedly shooting four people before being struck by a truck at whose occupants he'd opened fire. Among the victims was a twelve-year-old boy shot nine times.

15. March 25, 2022
Colorado Springs
820 Citadel Drive East
Two killed, two injured

Jeremiah Brown, 20, and Matthew Westrich, 21, lost their lives after a shooting that was reportedly motivated by a fight outside the popular Citadel mall. Another man and a woman survived their wounds.

14. March 9, 2022
Aurora
3300 North Ouray Street
One killed, four injured

An evening shooting at a Quality Inn killed a juvenile and hurt four others, including two women, ages nineteen and twenty.

13. January 9, 2022
Colorado Springs
1960 Chelton Road
Two killed, three injured

Two teenagers died and a third was injured, along with a pair of adults, in an early-morning shooting. Kadin Dyer Blaschke, nineteen, was arrested for the crime a few days later at a motel in Reno, Nevada.

12. January 1, 2022
Denver
1919 Blake Street
Two killed, two injured

Levi Floyd Diecidue, 22, was arrested in Aurora in connection with a New Year's shooting at Cabin Tap House that killed Hiyaw Zewdie, 29, and Devonte Phillips, 24, and put two men in the hospital.

11. December 27, 2021
Denver
56 Broadway
Six killed, two injured

The shooting rampage committed by Lyndon McLeod, 47, that began in Denver and ended in Lakewood killed Alicia Cardenas, Alyssa Gunn-Maldonado and Michael Swinyard, Danny Scofield and Sarah Steck. McLeod was eventually slain by Lakewood Police Agent Ashley Ferris after he'd shot her in the abdomen.

10. November 28, 2021
Aurora
1500 block of Dayton Street
Five injured

A shooting in the area of Dayton Street and East Colfax Avenue shortly after midnight on November 28 injured five people who were believed to have been attending a nearby party.

9. November 15, 2021
Aurora
1200 Nome Street
Six injured

Daniel Ruelas, sixteen, and three fifteen-year-old suspects were taken into custody regarding a shooting at Nome Park that wounded six.

8. October 31, 2022
Lakewood
6200 block of Alameda Avenue
Two killed, two injured

A 12:30 a.m. shooting near the intersection of Alameda and Harlan Street resulted in one death at the scene and another when the victim failed to respond to medical treatment. Another pair of individuals self-transported to a hospital.

7. October 30, 2021
Colorado Springs
1350 Pleier Drive
Four killed

Two adults and two juveniles died at a house in the Colorado Springs-area community of Gleneagle in what investigators characterized as a murder-suicide.

6. October 17, 2021
Colorado Springs
1865 North Academy Boulevard
Five injured

An exchange of gunfire outside a bar called the Latin Quarters resulted in five people hurt.

5. October 9, 2021
Denver
7300 block of East 22nd Avenue
One killed, three injured

Timothy Massangale, 62, was killed and another man and two women were hospitalized with serious injuries after the shooting.

4. October 2, 2021
Aurora
12230 East Colfax Avenue
One killed, three injured

A shooting in a room at Aurora's Hyatt House Hotel killed Angel Isia Ruiz, eighteen, and injured three others — a seventeen-year-old woman and two men in their early twenties.

3. August 22, 2021
Denver
19th Street and Blake Street
One killed, five injured

A shooting near the Beta nightclub at around 2:15 a.m. left 23-year-old Marquris Stewart dead and injured five others.

2. June 20, 2021
Aurora
12455 East Mississippi Avenue
One dead, four injured

A Juneteenth celebration turned into a horror show when gunfire erupted in the parking lot of a strip mall.

1. May 9, 2021
Colorado Springs
2828 Preakness Way
Seven killed

A late-night birthday party at the Canterbury Mobile Home Park went terribly wrong. Six people were killed before the gunman fatally shot himself.