AURORA | District Attorney John Kellner said the Aurora police officer that fatally shot Kilyn Lewis during his arrest in May will not face criminal charges in the shooting.
“I find that there is no criminal liability on the part of Officer Michael Dieck stemming from this (Officer Involved Shooting.) Criminal charges, therefore, are not appropriate or warranted related to the officer’s use of deadly force,” Kellner, 18th Judicial District Attorney said in a statement Friday.
Family members of Lewis, who have boisterously and sometimes disruptively protested Aurora City Council meetings since June, said they were stunned by the decision. The family has repeatedly been critical of the department for what they deem was the wrongful police shooting of an unarmed Black man and a preventable death.
“We have not had adequate time to carefully review this report or provide a thorough response, but at first glance, we are deeply disappointed and outraged,” family members said in a statement. “The decisions made by the leaders of Aurora are a grave injustice.”
The family said they learned of the long-awaited decision through the media Friday afternoon.
“The lack of respect and regard for our family is staggering as we have been present and begging for answers and transparency since we lost Kilyn,” Auon’tai Anderson, spokesperson for the Justice for Kilyn Action Team said in the statement Friday.
It appears that Dieck will return to limited duty at the police department.
“Officer Dieck remains on restricted duty in a non-public facing role,” police spokesperson Joe Moylan said in a statement. “The investigation into the use of force by APD’s Force Investigation Unit, as well as the administrative review of the incident are ongoing.”
Kellner said he and investigators presented the shooting case to an Arapahoe County grand jury, which declined to hear it.
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Five officers rushed onto Lewis May 23 while attempting to arrest him at an Aurora apartment parking lot. Police bodycam video showed that only one officer, Dieck, fired at Lewis as he raised his hands above his head, holding a mobile phone in one hand.
The Lewis family and supporters have been outspoken in its condemnation of the actions of Dieck, demanding consequences for him from police and city lawmakers. Appearing at every city council meeting since May, protesters have sometimes been raucous, often disrupting meetings.
In video clips taken from the perspectives of multiple officers, Lewis can be seen raising his hands, one of which held a phone, before Dieck fired the single shot that police say caused Lewis’ death.
Lewis had run-ins with law enforcement prior to May, pleading guilty to separate incidents of robbery, child abuse, trespassing and illegally discharging a firearm. State records show he served time in Colorado’s Department of Corrections.
After the Denver shooting, police officials said Aurora and Denver police tracked Kilyn Lewis to an apartment complex in the 300 block of South Ironton Street, where Aurora SWAT officers confronted him as he was standing near the open trunk of a red Chevrolet Monte Carlo, one of the vehicles visible on surveillance camera footage taken of the drive-by shooting weeks prior.
The body-worn camera footage released in June shows officers approaching Kilyn Lewis with their guns raised and demanding that Lewis get on the ground.
Kilyn Lewis starts to back away and reaches behind his back. He then moves his hands, one of which holds a cellphone, from behind his back and raises them, and is shot once by Dieck. As he falls to the ground, Kilyn Lewis yells multiple times, “I don’t have nothing.”
Family members have repeatedly asked for unedited and all body cam video from the shooting, but as of last week, had not received it, a spokesperson for the family said.
In the Oct. 11 report, investigators essentially repeated that description of events, adding some detail.
“The officers converged on Mr. Lewis with weapons drawn, identifying themselves as police officers, and yelling repeated commands for him to show his hands and get on the ground,” according to the investigation report. “Mr. Lewis initially showed his left hand but did not follow commands and instead dropped his right hand to his right rear pocket and began to dig in that pocket, out of direct view by the officers.
“Mr. Lewis then brought his hand up from his right rear pocket holding something in his hand. At that point, Officer Mike Dieck of the APD SWAT team fired one round from his pistol, striking Mr. Lewis in the stomach.”
The investigation says that Lewis fell to the ground and was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he later died.
The report cites an autopsy, revealing that the cause of death was the gunshot wound to the abdomen.
“Toxicology results revealed recent cocaine and fentanyl use by Mr. Lewis,” the report states.
Kellner said he accepted Dieck’s explanation for firing at Lewis.
“Dieck explained that he fired because he believed the object in Mr. Lewis’ hand was a firearm, and based on the totality of the circumstances, including Mr. Lewis’ body movement, moving towards the officers when confronted, the crime Mr. Lewis was wanted for, and his violent history, that Lewis was preparing to shoot at Dieck and other officers,” Kellner stated.
Previous history for Aurora officer
Three years before the fatal shooting of Kilyn Lewis, Aurora police Dieck used a Taser on a suspect during a 2021 incident that resulted in charges being filed against another officer who beat the same suspect with a gun as well as a third officer who failed to intervene.
The Sentinel on July 3 received a confidential tip about Dieck’s involvement in the July 23, 2021, arrest of Kyle Vinson by officers John Haubert and Francine Martinez. Vinson and two other men were sitting in a parking lot at the time they were confronted by Haubert and Martinez, who were responding to a trespassing call.
After learning that the three men had outstanding warrants, Martinez tried placing one of the men with Vinson in handcuffs. The man pulled away from Martinez, and he and the other man with Vinson fled on foot. Haubert then pushed Vinson, who had remained seated, backward onto the ground.
Despite the fact that Vinson did not run or attack officers, Haubert repeatedly struck Vinson in the head and face with his pistol. He held Vinson down by the throat as the 29-year-old cried and pleaded for Haubert to stop, repeatedly telling Haubert, “Don’t shoot me,” and, “You’re killing me.”
Arrest affidavits describe and footage captured by the body-worn cameras of Haubert and Martinez show Dieck arriving on the scene as backup while Haubert and Martinez continue to restrain Vinson. By this point, Vinson’s face is bruised and covered with blood, and he yells for help as Dieck approaches.
Haubert and Martinez roll Vinson onto his side, and Dieck shoots Vinson in the leg with a Taser. Vinson screams, and Dieck warns Vinson that, if Vinson doesn’t extend his hands, he is “going to get it again.”
Vinson was ultimately arrested for a domestic violence warrant — at the hospital, he was treated for the head wounds inflicted by Haubert and received multiple stitches.
Then-police chief Vanessa Wilson condemned the treatment of Vinson during a press conference shortly after the incident, saying she was “disgusted” and that the actions of the officers involved were “not police work.”
Martinez was subsequently charged with and found guilty of failure to intervene in the use of excessive force, the first conviction of its kind in Colorado. Haubert was charged with assault, felony menacing and other crimes but acquitted at trial in April.
While the arrest affidavits for Haubert and Martinez mention Dieck’s involvement in the arrest of Vinson, Dieck was not criminally charged, and police department spokesman Joe Moylan wrote in an email July 9 that Dieck’s use of a Taser during the 2021 incident was evaluated by APD’s Force Investigations Unit and found to have been “objectively reasonable.”
Family members said they plan on a press conference at 5:30 p.m. Monday in front of Aurora city hall, before a regularly scheduled city council meeting.
perhaps a wrongful death suit now?
Even though the Grand Jury chose to reject the case, from the video I saw?
That officer could have waited a nano second to see what the victim had in his hand. It never looked like the man was non compliant, never looked like he tried to point the cell phone at the officer, seems he was just trying to record his own death 🙁
And yet one more example of why the public has zero trust in our police or legal system.
I think the public has a lot of trust in the police. The issue is the people who want to support criminals and believe the police are unfairly treating them and their criminal friends. They cry foul when a hardened criminal gets what they deserve. I have no problem with criminals earning Darwin Awards.
Now we go into the next inning of the politically radical Lewis’ Family pursuit of millions of dollars. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? Citizens of Aurora have seen this brazen game before.
The only way the radicals will get any support from most of Aurora citizens is if they come out and tell us, “We do not expect any cash awards nor will we accept any cash awards as a result of Kilyn Lewis’ death.”
What’s the probability of that statement happening?
Yeah, I’m tired of cities paying out millions taxpayer $$ to these people’s families. Wrongful death lawsuits are a sham. We’ll probably see these low-lifes get rich off of this at our expense.
This guys was not exactly an upstanding citizen. He had an extensive rap sheet and the police were serving a warrant for his arrest, as noted in the article: “Lewis had run-ins with law enforcement prior to May, pleading guilty to separate incidents of robbery, child abuse, trespassing and illegally discharging a firearm. State records show he served time in Colorado’s Department of Corrections.” He didn’t listen to them and their commands and in a split-second they had to make a decision that clearly didn’t end well for the criminal. The commands are simple, but probably too complex for this idiot to understand.
It speaks volumes of what kinds of people in our city want to support the criminal here. The same people who support defunding the police and allowing crime to run rampant. The same people who are preventing the police from being able to do their jobs and are letting Aurora turn into to same kind of crime-laden city as Chicago, Detroit, and Philly.
I’m looking forward to positive change with our new Police Chief to start getting Aurora back to being a safe city that people want to live in. If that’s not the kind of change people want for the city, then they’re welcome to pack up and move elsewhere.
Though I was incorrectly stopped, at gun point officers told me to raise and show my hands. I placed them high above me for everyone to see that I was no threat. Were I to complain about being stopped and ordered out of myehicle, that would be done later.
Why would anyone reach around withis right hand, most people are right-handed, to a possible firearm?
I would never give policeven the slightest reason to shoot me.
This criminal would be alive today if only he had followed police instructions. There was no crime committed by police officers.