A teenager called 911 on himself in Colorado and threatened to open fire at responding police before an officer fatally shot the young — and ultimately unarmed — suspect on Thursday night, authorities said.
The 911 caller, “who is also the suspect in the incident,” phoned in at about 7:30 p.m. MDT and said he was going “open fire inside a business” in the 200 block of South Havana Street in Aurora and “threatened to shoot at” responding officers, according to a city police statement.
After the suspect ignored instructions to show hands, police fired “rubber projectiles” that “didn’t stop him,” Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain told reporters outside a Conoco gas station.
The suspect, “believed to be 17,” then charged at police when one of the three responding officers opened fire and killed the teen, according to the police statement.
Chamberlain said it does not appear that the suspect was armed.
“At this time, there has been no weapon that’s been located,” he said. “So what we had was the threat of a weapon. We had the actions of somebody who (said he) had a weapon. But there was no weapon and that is what the officer had to contend with.”
The officer who opened deadly fire will be placed on paid administrative leave as an outside law enforcement agency investigates this police shooting.
That officer only had moments to react to what he might have perceived as a potential active shooter, according to Chamberlain.
“All of those things, again, they don’t happen in days,” the chief said. “They unfortunately happen in seconds.”
The officers’ top priority had to be protecting potential shooting victims, Chamberlain said.
“At first we had to address the potential of the violence attached,” the police chief said. “And that potential was an individual who stated that he was going to shoot up a business that he was basically going to become an active shooter.”
Thursday night’s confrontation unfolded just 2 1/2 miles from an Aurora movie theater where a dozen people were killed during a July 20, 2012 screening of “The Dark Knight Rises,” which was then regarded as one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.
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