Aurora cop who crashed into car at 100 mph accused of homicide

AURORA | A former Aurora police officer involved in a fatal car crash while responding to a call in March is now facing homicide charges, the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office announced Thursday.

The officer was traveling about 100 miles an hour at the time of the crash with no lights or siren, according to an arrest affidavit.

Eduardo Landeros, 26, is facing charges of vehicular homicide, a class 4 felony, and criminally negligent homicide, a class 5 felony.

The rollover crash killed a man later identified as Elias Hans Anderson, 44, and seriously injured Landeros.

At about 8 p.m. March 4, police were called to the scene of 2300 block of South Blackhawk Street on a report of suspicious activity at a condominium.

The suspicious incident call Landeros was responding to had been recorded as priority 2 call, which is non-emergent. The reporting party had noticed that the door of a vacant unit where an eviction notice was posted appeared to be kicked in.

“There were no updates to the call that indicated a need to raise the priority level or a need for an emergent response,” the affidavit said.

Landeros was headed to the scene at about 8:15 p.m. While en route, he reported his Chevy Tahoe police cruiser had struck another vehicle, that the police vehicle had flipped over, and that he was trapped inside.

Landeros was northbound on South Chambers Road at the time and said that Anderson’s Toyota Corolla, eastbound on East Bates Avenue, had pulled in front of him. Colorado State Patrol spokesman Troy Kessler later said that Anderson failed to yield the right-of-way at the intersection, where the only traffic control devices are stop signs on Bates, and was “T-boned” by Landeros.

Kessler said in a news conference addressing the crash that Anderson was believed to have been intoxicated, and that speed was a factor in the crash. 

Both drivers were transported to Aurora South Medical Center with serious injuries, where the civilian was later pronounced dead. 

Kessler said Landeros had not activated his vehicle’s lights nor siren at the time of the crash. Anderson was wearing a seatbelt while Landeros was not.

The affidavit said that an Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office found a plastic straw with residue consistent with fentanyl on Anderson’s person after the crash. A toxicology report to determine whether Anderson was under the influence at the time of death, which can take 10 to 12 weeks to be processed, has not been released.

Blood was collected from Landeros by paramedics while he was being transported to the hospital, the affidavit said. While at the hospital Landeros gave his consent for the blood to be tested.

Landeros’ body-worn camera footage was turned over to the Colorado State Patrol, which conducted an investigation of the crash. Dashboard footage of the crash was not available but police obtained video footage of the street from a homeowner who provided it to the police.

The footage shows South Chambers Road just south of the crash location and show’s Landeros’ Chevy Tahoe “traveling at a very high rate of speed passing the house approximately one second before a loud noise from the crash,” the affidavit said.

The affidavit noted that due to the number of cars traveling southbound at the time of the crash, “there would not have been much of a gap for the Toyota to run the stop sign and travel across the southbound lanes without being hit by a southbound vehicle.”

Body camera footage reviewed by the Colorado State Patrol show that Landeros responded to the call at 8:16 p.m. After passing East Dartmouth Avenue, footage showed that Landeros accelerated to over 100 miles per hour and was continuing at that speed when he passed the intersection of South Chambers Road.

“At 2019 hours and 36 seconds I observed Officer Landeros bring his right hand back to the steering wheel and swerve,” the affidavit said. “I observed as the steering wheel turned I could see the speedometer was at approximately 104 to 105 MPH. The crash took place between 2019 hours and 36 seconds and 2019 hours and 27 seconds.”

At the scene of the crash, police observed that the speedometer of Anderon’s Toyota was stuck in place at 50 miles per hour. A reconstruction of the crash conducted by CSP indicated that Anderson was traveling between 16 and 18 miles per hour and Landeros between 88 and 98 miles per hour, which was consistent with recorded speeds from the vehicles’ airbag control modules, the affidavit said.

The Colorado State Patrol filed a notification of a criminal investigation pertaining to Landeros with Colorado’s Peace Officer Standards & Training department on March 17. According to the filing, Landeros has been employed with APD since February 2022.

Aurora Police Department spokesperson Sydney Edwards said Landeros was placed on injury leave following the crash. He was scheduled for an internal affairs interview on April 26 but resigned from the department April 25. An internal investigation of the crash is ongoing by APD.