AURORA | Aurora police offered new details but did not release the names of the officer who fatally shot an 18-year-old man after an apparent hostage situation at a west-central Aurora apartment complex early Sunday.
Arapahoe County Coroner officials identified the man as Jose David Guillen Socorro.
At a news conference Monday, Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said Socorro had been in a dispute with people inside his apartment on the 1900 block of South Vaughn Way, including his mother whom he allegedly was beating with a handgun.
Two residents of the apartment called for help at about 11:15 p.m. Saturday. Chamberlain played a recording of a 911 call in which an unidentified woman speaking Spanish told dispatchers Socorro had broken his mother’s head or mouth, or both.
Officers at the scene, some in an armored vehicle, used a bullhorn and phone to try to negotiate with Socorro to surrender. Chamberlain said a member of APD’s hostage negotiating team, along with other officers, was able to facilitate the release of Socorro’s mother without further injury at about 1 a.m. Sunday.
Police say Socorro appeared in the doorway of the apartment shortly after with a gun and fired several shots at officers. One officer returned fire with several rounds, striking him, and he fell to the ground. Socorro died from gunfire wounds after being transported to a hospital, police reported.
Chamberlain said officers had “tried to de-escalate this with every means possible,” and that it was only after the “suspect decided to make that incredibly aggressive and dangerous and life threatening move” that police shot him.
Chamberlain cited the department’s ongoing investigation for withholding the name of the officer who shot the suspect. APD said in a news release that the officer has been placed on paid administrative leave while the 18th Judicial Critical Incident Response Team investigates the case for possible criminality and APD conducts an internal review of the case.
“We are going to make sure that the officers, all of the officers involved in this incident, follow policy and procedures and also within the parameters of the legal guidelines of the state of Colorado,” Chamberlain told reporters.
Chamberlain said APD will share body camera footage of the incident after it shows that footage to the Socorro’s mother, whose injuries and current medical condition he did not describe.
He said the woman — and presumably her son — had immigrated to the U.S. in 2021 from Venezuela. He mentioned that the man “does have, without question, the propensity for violence” and that a protective order may have been issued against him in another state.
Chamberlain made a point of noting that police were called to the scene for help, and that the situation was “something that they were requested to go to.”
“There was a real fear on behalf of the officers inside that there was really going to be grave harm to the mother,” he told reporters.
He called it a “tragic event.”
“I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose a son or a daughter in a situation like this,” he said. “But I also couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be victimized by your own children to the point to where they’re beating you with a handgun.”
The incident marks Aurora Police Department’s fourth officer-involved shooting this year, department spokesman Joe Moylan told the Sentinel, noting there were four in 2023 and 13 in 2022.
The department asks anyone with information to contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720.913.STOP (7867).
Here’s yet another Darwin Award winner the taxpayers don’t have to support in our Correctional system. Thank you APD for removing him from the gene pool.
Waiting for Tay Anderson, MiDian Shofner, and the usual shysters to crawl out from their collective rocks and attempt to reframe this scumbag as some kind of martyr in 3-2-1…
Maybe we can get Tim Hernandez to come and screech like a banshee at the police chief again.