A lone gunman shot four people to death and wounded three, including a police officer, on Monday in a Denver-area shooting spree that unfolded at several locations and ended with police killing the suspect, authorities said.
Investigators have yet to determine a motive for the rampage, which began around 5 p.m. when the gunman shot and killed two women and wounded a man near downtown Denver, Police Chief Paul Pazen said a news briefing.
The suspect then fled in a car and fatally shot a man in east Denver’s Cheesman Park neighborhood, before opening fire again in a west Denver community where no one was hit, Pazen said. According to Pazen, the suspect twice exchanged gunfire from his vehicle with Denver officers pursuing him, disabling a police cruiser.
From there, the gunman drove into the neighboring city of Lakewood, where he shot and killed a fourth person inside an unspecified business, according to Lakewood Police spokesman John Romero.
The gunman fled from Lakewood police when they attempted to pull him over and engaged in a running gun battle with officers before fleeing on foot and entering a hotel, where he shot and wounded a clerk, Romero said.
He then shot at police officers again, wounding one of them, before police shot him dead, Romero told reporters. Authorities did not publicly identify the suspect, and said circumstances leading to the shooting remained under investigation.
The conditions of the wounded officer and civilians were not immediately known, Romero said.
Anne Wilson, a shopper who was inside a cellular phone store in Lakewood when gunfire erupted nearby, told a Denver-based NBC-affiliate TV station she heard “seven or eight gunshots, and then like another set of maybe five more.”
Wilson said she and other customers were quickly ushered by store employees into a back room behind security gates until the danger had passed. “It is scary, scary times we live in,” she said.
Fifth victim dies in Denver shooting rampage; gunman identified
A hotel clerk gravely wounded in a Denver-area shooting spree died on Tuesday, bringing to five the number of people killed in Monday night’s rampage by a gunman, who was slain by police, authorities said.
Police in Denver and the adjacent suburb of Lakewood announced the latest death at a news briefing a day after the rampage, which spanned both municipalities and two tattoo shops.
Police identified the gunman as 47-year-old Lyndon James McLeod. They did not offer a possible motive and provided few details about McLeod, except to say that all of the dead but one, the hotel clerk, were known to him. McLeod’s ties to the victims were not explained.
McLeod died following an exchange of gunfire with a Lakewood police officer who, despite taking a bullet to the abdomen, was able to fire her weapon, fatally striking the gunman, police said.
Lakewood police spokesman John Romero declined to name the officer, a three-year veteran of the force, but called her actions “heroic.”
“She took a situation that was horrendous and put herself in harm’s way to stop it,” Romero said, adding that the officer underwent surgery and was expected to survive.
Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen said McLeod had been on “law enforcement’s radar” prior to the shooting as the subject of investigations in 2020 and again in 2021, but was never charged with a crime. Pazen declined to discuss the nature of the probes.
Police said the shooting began shortly after 5 p.m. on Monday when McLeod entered a tattoo parlor near downtown Denver and opened fire, killing two women and critically wounding a man.
He then shot dead a man at a home in east Denver before firing at others on the city’s west side without hitting anyone. Police said McLeod then got into a running gun battle with Denver police who were pursuing him.
He ultimately drove to Lakewood and entered another tattoo shop, where he fatally shot a man, then stormed into a hotel and shot the clerk, leading to his deadly encounter with the Lakewood officer.
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