AURORA |Aurora police say an arrest has been made in connection with the shooting of an Aurora police officer during a traffic stop last week that left the veteran officer wounded.
The Aurora Police Department announced the arrest through its official Twitter account Tuesday night. No other information was released, but police are planning a news conference Wednesday morning at 11 a.m.
Officer Ryan Burns, an 11-year veteran of the department, was shot Friday night but is expected to survive.
He and another officer pulled the vehicle over and a person in the car began firing at them. One of the officers returned fire, but police do not know if the suspect was hit.
After the shooting, the vehicle, which had just been reported stolen, was found abandoned several blocks away.
Police did not say if the arrest came because of an increase in a reward for information. Police were offering $35,000 for tips after a weeklong investigation turned up little information about who the shooter was.
It was likely the biggest reward the department has ever offered.
The reward was $7,000 on Monday, but with help from local businesses, the Arapahoe County district attorney’s office, Crime Stoppers and federal law enforcement, police upped that figure.
Police on Tuesday identified the wounded Burns, who worked as a patrol officer in northwest Aurora, remained hospitalized Tuesday but police said he is expected to survive and his condition is improving.
In Friday’s incident, the shooter fired on two officers around 9 p.m. Nov. 14 when the officers pulled over a stolen vehicle at East 17th Avenue and Fulton Street. Fania said the officers didn’t know the vehicle was stolen at the time and stopped the driver for an unrelated traffic infraction.
When the officers approached the vehicle, the shooter fired several shots out the driver’s side window, striking one of the officers. The second officer shot back at the car, but the vehicle sped away.
Officers found the suspect’s vehicle a few blocks north a short time after the shooting, but the shooter had fled.
Aurora police, along with help from Denver police and the Jefferson County sheriff’s office, searched the area well into the early morning hours Saturday, but did not find the suspect.
The car the suspect was driving was stolen a short time before the shooting after the owner left it running a few blocks from the scene of the shooting, police said.
Fania said investigators have processed the vehicle for evidence, but he couldn’t say what information officers were able to glean from the vehicle.
Police have not released a description of the shooter.
Fania said Burns and his family are not planning on speaking publicly about the case in the immediate future.
Burns worked as a patrol officer out of District No. 1, which includes all of Aurora west of Interstate 225, including the neighborhood where he was shot.
In September 2013, Burns and another officer were awarded a Commander’s Commendation after they tracked down two bank robbery suspects. According to an announcement about the award at the time, Burns and the other officer, Levi Huffine, viewed surveillance footage of the two suspects and later that day saw them walking down East Colfax Avenue wearing the same clothes they wore during the robbery. Burns and Huffine arrested the pair without incident, police said. They still had the cash from the robbery.
The two officers were “commended for their diligence in following up on this investigation and maintaining awareness while on routine patrol,” police wrote at the time.