AURORA | A jury reached a split verdict this week in connection with a former Aurora Police officer charged with assault after shooting a man in the leg during a police call on New Year’s Eve 2022.
A jury found Douglas Harroun, 34, not guilty on a first-degree assault charge and did not reach a verdict on a second-degree assault charge, as first reported by 9news.
Prosecutors from the 18th Judicial District said they would retry Harroun on the second-degree charges at a later date, according to district spokesperson Eric Ross.
Last month, in an unrelated case, Harroun avoided jail time by pleading guilty to assaulting a woman with a disability, days after the New Year’s Eve shooting. Police said he repeatedly punched and choked a woman in the parking lot of his Aurora apartment complex during a January 2023 argument about a loose dog.
In an agreement with prosecutors last month, he pleaded guilty in September to a single misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment. In exchange, Harroun agreed to two years of supervised probation and a requirement that he complete anger management classes.
In the New Year’s case, shortly before 11 p.m. Dec. 31. APD responded to a 911 call for a woman who said she was being physically assaulted by a man in a home in the 1200 block of Chambers Road.
Harroun and fellow Officer Daniel Aguirre arrived at the scene, with now-former Officer Eduardo Landeros responding later as backup.
At the scene, the woman said that Juan Ruiz-Reta, had come upstairs while drunk, broke down the door to her room, pushed her in the chest, grabbed her cell phone and smashed it against the ground.
By the time police arrived, he had gone into the basement, the affidavit said. The woman told officers that Ruiz-Reta spoke only Spanish and that she did not believe he had any weapons.
Ruiz-Reta refused commands from the officers to come upstairs, and Harroun and Aguirre radioed for backup and descended into the basement with their guns drawn.
here were three men in the basement, the affidavit stated. Ruiz-Reta put his hands up and the other two retreated and raised their hands.
Harroun placed Ruiz-Reta into custody, and while he was attempting to handcuff him, the two got into a physical altercation that dislodged Harroun’s body camera, the affidavit said. After being handcuffed, Ruiz-Reta resisted going up the stairs and struggled with Harroun on the staircase.
While on the staircase, Harroun could be heard from Landeros’ body camera footage telling someone three times to get back, the affidavit stated. After the second time, Harroun drew his gun and shot one of the other men in the room.
A description of Landeros’ body camera footage said the victim was at the bottom of the stairs with his left hand in or near his pocket, and his right hand visible without any weapons.
“He appears to be walking towards the stairway in a non-aggressive manner,” the affidavit said. “He took an additional two steps towards the stairs as the ‘get back’ commands were being said.”
Ruiz-Reta was taken into custody on a domestic violence charge. The shooting victim was transported to University Hospital, where he was treated for a gunshot wound to his right ankle. According to the affidavit, a doctor who treated the victim described the injuries as carrying a substantial risk of serious permanent disfigurement and protracted impairment of function.
The incident was investigated by the 18th Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team, which is responsible for conducting an independent investigation anytime there is a use of force incident by a police officer.
In an interview with the lead CIRT detectives, Harroun said that he shot the victim because it looked like he was planning to move up the stairs. He said he could not see the victim’s left hand, and was worried that he had gone into the basement kitchen and grabbed a knife.
He told investigators that he could not use his taser because he was being screamed at and hit by the woman who had made the 911 call, and he was attempting to fend her off with his left hand.
In reviewing body camera footage from the three officers, an investigator with the DA’s office said he did not observe the woman attacking Harroun, and that Landeros’ body camera showed that he was standing between her and Harroun at the time of the shooting.
“Your affiant did not observe any aggressive posturing, mannerisms or movements that would justify or authorize Officer Harroun using deadly force” against the victim, the affidavit said.
Despite that, jurors did not agree to a conviction on either charge.
In the later assault case, police were called Jan. 11, 2023 to investigate an assault in the apartment parking lot in the 15000 block of East Briarwood Circle in Aurora.
Police requested the support of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office because one of the parties was an Aurora Police Department officer, Harroun, according to an arrest affidavit.
Investigators said Harroun and his wife were driving into the complex where they lived and got into an argument with a woman who was walking her dog off leash in the road.
The woman yelled at Harroun for following her, and he and his wife then got into a verbal argument with her, the affidavit said. They then got out of the car and continued to argue.
Witnesses told investigators they saw Douglas punch the victim in the left side of her face, the affidavit said. The victim “fell to the ground and Douglas got on top of her and continued to punch her in the head four to five more times.”
The affidavit said the woman has a chronic pain disorder that affects the nerves in half of her body.
Harroun was placed on indefinite suspension without pay following his arrest, and resigned from the department at the end of January 2023.
The victim told investigators that Harroun had been driving so close to her dog that she thought he was going to hit him, and she asked Harroun why he was following them so closely. She said that Harroun became verbally confrontational with her.
The victim had a canister of pepper spray in her pocket and told police that she at one point she threatened Harroun with it while he was yelling at her to try to get him to back down, but she did not deploy it.
From there, she said that Harroun knocked her to the ground, punched her six to eight times in the head with a closed fist and used his right hand to put pressure around her neck to the point where she had difficulty breathing.
She told investigators that Harroun also said that he was a police officer and that she was under arrest.
The woman Harroun assaulted has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city. A federal judge in September refused the city’s request to dismiss her case, saying Aurora Police Department’s murky policies regarding officers on administrative leave could have contributed to Harroun’s behavior.
“his left hand in or near his pocket, and his right hand visible without any weapons.” sound vaguely familiar doesn’t it?