AURORA | A pair of Aurora police officers will face no criminal charges for engaging in a fatal firefight with a man wearing body armor in an Aurora home in January, according to the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Brian Sugioka determined Aurora Officers Zachary Ploch and David Kaufman were justified when they fired a dozen combined rounds at 42-year-old Esmond Trimble shortly after 2 a.m. on Jan. 15.
Trimble, 42, recorded dozens of songs under the pseudonym Ron Eazi from the late 2000s until about 2013, according to William Washington, a Denver software engineer who helped edit several of Trimble’s videos.
Trimble, who was wearing body armor on his torso and chest, fired 15 rounds at the officers using a semi-automatic Smith and Wesson pistol, investigators determined. Neither Ploch nor Kaufman were reported to have been injured during the gunfight.
Both Kaufman and Ploch responded to a home at 1473 S. Kenton St. at 1:58 a.m. Jan. 15 on a report of a family member with a gun who was acting erratically. The responding officers briefly spoke with Trimble’s wife, who had fled the house and was standing in the driveway with her two young children.
Trimble’s wife told officials that her husband “was acting very oddly, making references to biblical verses and not making any sense,” according to Sugioka’s report. The officers then placed Trimble’s wife and her children in the back of their squad car to keep them warm. As they escorted the Trimbles into the car, they heard a single gunshot fired from inside the home and proceeded to enter through the attached garage.
Once inside, the officers spotted Trimble hiding in a back bedroom with another man who was later identified as 58-year-old Dean Heerdt, Trimble’s father-in-law. Officers watched Trimble repeatedly peer around the doorway of the bedroom with a pistol in each hand. Heerdt, unarmed, stood with his arms raised before obeying officers’ commands to get on the ground.
Trimble repeatedly refused officers’ commands to drop his weapons, but instead instructed Heerdt to “stay there,” and “stay on the floor, Dean.”
Ploch and Kaufman stationed themselves behind a short wall in the home’s family room and across from the back bedroom, according to the DA’s report. After approximately one minute, Ploch used his department-issued Glock handgun to fire one shot toward Trimble, but missed him.
Kaufman, thinking Ploch’s shot was in fact Trimble firing one of his handguns, then fired five rounds at Trimble. None of Kaufman’s initial shots struck Trimble.
Several seconds later, the three men exchanged significant gunfire, with Kaufman firing four rounds, Ploch firing two rounds and Trimble firing an estimated 15 rounds, according to forensic analysis conducted after the shooting.
One of Ploch’s shots struck Trimble in the chest, killing him.
The majority of Trimble’s shots were directed toward Heerdt, who was lying face-down in the bedroom beside him. Heerdt was shot eight times: four times in the head, once in his neck, twice in his back and once in his arm. All of the gunshots appeared to have been fired by Trimble, with only the shot possibly coming from Kaufman’s gun. However, forensic tests were not able to decisively conclude whether a bullet that struck Heerdt’s forearm was fired by one of the two Aurora police officers.
The officers entered the bedroom several minutes after the firefight with the help of additional personnel who came equipped with a ballistic shield.
Both Heerdt and Trimble were declared dead at the scene, and both men were sober when they were killed, autopsy reports revealed.
After the shooting, investigators found several other legal guns in the home’s bedroom, including a pair of semi-automatic rifles that were not used at any point during the shooting.
“Trimble was armed, wearing body armor, and appeared to be holding an individual hostage in the bedroom, and had refused multiple orders to drop the guns and get on the ground,” Sugioka wrote in his analysis justifying Kaufman’s decision to shoot toward Trimble. “Trimble had already fired his gun once prior to the officers’ entry, and Kaufman did not know whether Heerdt had already been injured. Further, Kaufman was aware that Trimble was not in a normal frame of mind, and that his wife was very concerned that he would hurt himself or Heerdt. Given all of these objective facts … Kaufman’s decision to open fire was objectively reasonable.
Heerdt was a co-owner of the home on Kenton Street, along with Kathy Heerdt, Arapahoe County property records show.
Trimble was a semi-professional rapper from California who had recorded dozens of songs under the pseudonym Ron Easy throughout the late 2000s.