Aurora police chief said boy, 17, shot by police was transgender, ‘tragic’

AURORA | Police Chief Todd Chamberlain last week disclosed new details about the 17-year-old boy shot by an Aurora police officer last month, saying the boy was transgender whose “whole life was tragic.”

The chief was speaking publicly during a Oct. 22 town hall held by Councilmember Steve Sundberg.

In a previous press conference, Chamberlain said Blaze Aleczander Balle-Mason called 911, claiming he planned to “shoot up” a Conoco gas station at 290 S. Havana St. and open fire on responding officers. 

Chamberlain also said that Balle-Mason was living in a halfway house at the time of the shooting.

“That 17-year-old boy, which is, again, it’s tragic,” Chamberlain said during the town hall held at the Aurora Central Recreation Center. “I think his whole life was tragic, to be honest with you. He was not in his home. He was living in a facility. He was actually taken out of his home. He was going through sexual confusion. He was transitioning. There were all kinds of dynamics that are incredibly troubling.”

Chamberlain did not offer details on assertions that Balle-Mason was transgender or how that was linked to the fatal shooting. Recent trends on social media have linked transgender people to acts of violence. Advocates for transgender people point out that there is no evidence for those statements, and that claims are false and misleading. 

Recently adding to a trend of linking transgender people to acts of violence was the shooter who killed Charlie Kirk, who was connected to a trans person. This week, a transgender high school student in Indiana was accused of plotting a “Valentine’s Day mass shooting,”  pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. 

According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), there were 5,748 mass shootings between Jan. 1, 2013, and Sept. 15, 2025, in the U.S. Of that number, there have been five confirmed transgender shooters.

None of the details about Balle-Mason was previously released to the public or the press, and it is unclear why Chamberlain chose to disclose it at the local town hall. As of Wednesday, police did not respond to questions about the statements. 

Steven Haden, a psychiatric social worker and founder of Envision: You, a statewide mental health initiative supporting LGBTQ Coloradans, told the Sentinel that outing someone for their gender identity or their sexual orientation is a “violation of privacy, and it creates a very serious safety threat for those who are encountering police.” 

“It is incredibly dehumanizing,” Haden said. “It continues to erode trust between LGBTQ individuals and law enforcement, which is not good for anyone, and the speculation around a person’s identity who’s now dead was immaterial to the situation itself.”

If the person were alive, it could lead to job or housing loss, and it could be the first time the person’s family learns the information, Haden said. In this situation, when the person is dead, it seems irrelevant to the public’s need to know.

“It sounds like the system failed this person,” said Addison Herron-Wheeler, co-publisher and editor-in-chief at OUT FRONT, based in Denver.

Whether Chamberlain was implying that Balle-Mason was taken from their home because they were violent, or whether the Balle-Mason was removed from their home because of family members mistreating them, was not clarified by Chamberlain. Herron-Wheeler said, either way, the system failed Balle-Mason. The boy needed some kind of intervention and support, she said, but there was no intervention to prevent him from deciding to go to the gas station that night, and the police failed Balle-Mason in how they handled the call. 

Referring to Balle-Mason’s life as “tragic” while only giving limited information without context to what that meant was also misleading, Herron-Wheeler said. People who are transitioning are not tragic, and saying that without more information is harmful.

Also, Herron-Wheeler, Haden, and Barbara Simon, the senior director of news and campaigns for GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy organization, all said that transitioning is not scientifically or medically considered “sexual confusion,” but rather gender identity. It was unclear why Chamberlain offered those details, or why he even mentioned the “sexual frustration” at all.

Chamberlain made the comments while answering a resident’s question about how and when the city’s Crisis Response Team, referred to as a CRT, is deployed to 911 calls. He said CRT was en route to the call involving Balle-Mason, but the situation escalated before they arrived.

“It’s more of a social issue, or a social behavior or a mental health issue, that’s when they respond, they can co-respond,” Chamberlains said.

He said that Balle-Mason did not give the police department enough time for the CRT to get there. If Balle-Mason said, “I want to talk,” the police would have worked with him, Chamberlain said. Instead, Balle-Mason ran toward the officers with his hands in his pockets, giving them little time to respond, and forced them to take measures to protect themselves and the public around the gas station, Chamberlain said. 

Aurora police employees contacted the Sentinel and agreed to speak anonymously because they were unauthorized to publicly discuss the topic. They said the incident was likely a “suicide by cop” incident. The term refers to a well-researched law-enforcement phenomenon where a person intentionally provokes officers into using lethal force. Subjects typically call police to announce their intentions, threaten to kill officers and often are found without weapons.

Aurora police said Balle-Mason was found to be unarmed after the shooting.

When Aurora police arrived at the gas station scene, officers first used a 40-millimeter less-lethal launcher, which fires “rubber” or “foam” projectiles,” in an effort to defuse the encounter. Officers are trained to recognize and respond appropriately, Chamberlain said during a previous press conference, but he added that this incident was unique and must be evaluated based on the facts known at the time, not in hindsight.

He also said in the previous press conference that Aurora’s crisis response units and clinicians are designed to respond to non-violent situations, such as when someone is despondent, suicidal or refusing to eat or sleep.

During the town hall, Chamberlain said that all active shooter situations involve suicidal ideation.

“Almost all of those individuals who are involved in active shooters or schoolyard violence,” Chamberlain said. “It is a process of suicide ideation, where they say that they are going to be killed at the end of an event. They have no plans of surrender. If you look at the ones that have occurred recently, most of them have been killed either by self-infliction or they’ve been killed by police.”

There is no perfect solution, and officers may have no choice but to use lethal force for public safety, he said. 

The FBI recommends distinct training for suicide by cop and in active shooter situations, even though the shooter is usually also suicidal. The FBI said that clues of when someone is a suicide by cop suspect include having no demands, presenting no terms, advancing on police and reaching for or raising a weapon or imitation weapon. Tactics to defuse the situation include overtly showing compassion and offering help.

“If a weapon had been drawn,” Haden said, “law enforcement needs to address that threat immediately and take whatever actions necessary to protect themselves and the safety of people in the area. That’s just a very different approach, and this was not an active shooter. This is not a person who has shown a weapon to anyone. And so it’s just very different.”

The security camera footage of Balle-Mason showed the boy wearing socks but no shoes, sitting at the gas station and appearing to be waiting for officers to arrive, as dispatchers mentioned to the officer in the body camera footage when the officers arrived at the scene.

Researchers agree that it is rare for an active shooter to call the police in advance and to threaten to kill officers. At the same time, one of the possible red flags cited by the Police Executive Research Forum for a suspected suicide by cop incident is a subject calling the police to threaten them.  

In a “​​Suicide by Cop: Protocol and Training Guide” created by Police Executive Research Forum in 2019, researchers state that there are two kinds of “suicide by cop,” spontaneous and planned. The training said that a suicidal person might point a firearm at or even run at officers. It also says that a way to recognize whether a person is suicidal includes the subject behaving aggressively toward the police for no apparent reason.

“In the Los Angeles study of 419 Suicide by Cop incidents, 4% of the subjects had a firearm. Another 4% had a replica or fake weapon, and 5% had their hands in their pockets or otherwise appeared to possibly have a weapon. 16% of the subjects were armed with a knife,” the PERF study said. 

The training also said the defining characteristics of “suicide by cop” incidents are that the subject will threaten the life of the officer or another person, or they will attempt to make the officer believe they pose such a threat, to give the officer no choice but to use lethal force to stop the threat. 

“​​Each year from 2015 to 2018, there were approximately 900 to 1,000 fatal officer-involved shootings in the United States,” PERF Suicide by Cop training said. “By various estimates, approximately 10% to 29% or more of officer-involved shootings involve Suicide by Cop incidents. Thus, it is reasonable to believe that there may be 100 or more fatal SbC incidents each year.”

PERF researchers recommend against “bark orders” because they can “heighten anxiety” and reduce compliance. Instead, PERF recommends making small, pointed requests to build trust and reduce panic. The officers in the incident demanded that Balle-Mason come to them with his arms up, rather than addressing him calmly.

Chamberlain said that Balle-Mason refused to comply with police during the intervention, which “has to be in conjunction with the suspect willing to have that intervention component.”

“All this individual would have had to do to stop was listen to the officers for one second and show his hands,” Chamberlain said. “If they had been able to have anything longer than 15 seconds, I guarantee you that dialogue would have changed.”

PERF recommends that officers say they are “here to help” and that pointing firearms gives a nonverbal message that dominates the interaction. They recommend maintaining distance, using cover, and keeping guns lowered unless a confirmed weapon is visible, which allows for calmer communication, according to 2019 data and research from a variety of sources cited.

“None of these officers want to get involved in those situations, but that’s what they do,” Chamberlain said during the press conference. “That’s what their role is. That’s what they’re here for. They’re here to serve, and they are using every tool, every opportunity, everything that they are trained to do, to do the best job that they possibly can in some incredibly, incredibly complex situations.”

The 18th Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team, known as CIRT, is investigating the shooting. Aurora police are conducting a parallel internal review.