AURORA | Coroner officials identified the 15-year-old boy shot to death Saturday in the Southlands Mall parking lot as Raphael Ivan Velin.
Police are asking for the public’s help in finding what they described as four Black males responsible for the shooting death.
Dispatchers received calls about a shooting in the mall parking lot about 8:30 p.m. and that a victim was near 6100 South Main Street, police said.
“When officers arrived, they found a 15-year-old suffering from a gunshot wound,” police spokesperson Sydney Edwards said in a statement. “Lifesaving measures were attempted by first responders before the teen was transported to a local hospital where he passed away from his injuries.”
Police said witnesses and “evidence collected from the scene shows the suspects to be four or five Black males who fled the scene in a black four-door sedan.”
Edwards later said the car had been found, but she did not disclose where.
“The investigation also shows that this encounter was a pre-planned meeting with the involved parties,” Edwards said.”There is no known threat to shoppers, however, Aurora police has increased patrol presence at the Southlands mall Sunday.”
Police are asking any witnesses or residents in the nearby Wheatlands neighborhood near the mall to check surveillance cameras for anything that might have been recorded from the shooting.
A press conference planned Monday to discuss the shooting was postponed.
Police said anyone with information can call Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867. Tipsters can remain anonymous and still be eligible for a reward of up to $2,000, police said.
Again. And again. And yet again.
Hoodlums are trashing our city with violence and crime. They not only extract huge tolls on their direct victims but also on our community in terms of police work, court time, sense of security, hospital care, and civic pride. Lock these punks up for decades! As a taxpayer, long term incarceration seems to be an effective and cost effective way to protect our community.
It’s more like this. A young gangster group searched for this boy and got him. The car was likely stolen as were the guns. They knew this boy, this wasn’t an accident it was a hit. This is not a total surprise it’s to be expected anymore, what else is new?
What’s incorrect about the story as it was reported ”There is no known threat to shoppers…’ A little overlooked Correction – a sixteen-year-old kid shooting in a crowd is an enormous threat! Now there’s a set-up for another totally innocent victim.
but it’s not! Even though one might think so.
While the United States represents about 4.2 percent of the world’s population,[5] it houses around 20 percent of the world’s prisoners. consider the costs: Corrections (which includes prisons, jails, probation, and parole) cost around $74 billion in 2007 according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).[7][8]
The United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world through the juvenile courts and the adult criminal justice system, which reflects the larger trends in incarceration practices in the United States. In 2010, approximately 70,800 juveniles were incarcerated in youth detention facilities alone.[1] As of 2006, approximately 500,000 youth were brought to detention centers in a given year.[2] This data does not reflect juveniles tried as adults. As of 2013, around 40% were incarcerated in privatized, for-profit facilities.[3]
Let’s come up with another way to address violence and crime.
I appreciate you sharing these facts. But, let’s be clear: young people who use guns for intimidation, use them to kill or injure, are too dangerous to our society to be allowed their freedom. They have already been given the guidance of their parents and their teachers and maybe even a court intervention, to no avail. A gun crime should be the hard line our compassionate society refuses to cross.
Rudderless children, broken by an ill-conceived lockdown, bereft parenting, manipulated by gangs, running free in a world of diminished legal consequences. Who’d have guessed?
rudderless, yep! ill-conceived lockdown? (1000000 deaths even with the lock down!), bereft parenting: I love this one. we have a segment that refuses education (yep sex) to our youth, try to remove access to birth control (and yes to necessary abortions), complain about money for education and then when these young people have sex and create babies? Well, that’s on them. And their inexperience, proverty, lack of education and frustration with life? And you wonder why there are GANGS? Oh, yeah, diminished legal consequences: because we give breaks to our youth because their brains aren’t fully developed…..
Congratulations, you checked off all the requisite boxes in the leftist, criminal-apologist talking points manual. FTR, children were never at high risk for COVID, just peep the ages and related comorbidities, and remove the miraculous disappearance of flu during the lockdown and you’ll have the real numbers. Sex education has been trans-hijacked and is as much education as gender studies is a worthwhile degree. degree. Moreover, money spent on public education correlates poorly with outcome. UT spends at the bottom and has the fourth-highest SATs in the nation. It’s how you spend that matters. I could go on but you bore me.
Thank you, Not Dave. Doug King has bored me for years but has been thankfully silent for some time. One of the reasons, that I’ve been silent for some time but can come back as the Sentinel Blog seems not to censor me anymore. I think!
“UT spends at the bottom and has the fourth highest SAT scores in the nation.” Excuse me?!? How does this relate to the topic of 4 Colorado teens shooting another teen?!?
The University of Texas at Austin has long been able to attract top minds from around the world. It automatically accepts only the top ten percent of each public Texas high school’s graduating class and reserves the remaining seats for extremely talented students from the rest of the US and the world. It has an enormous endowment fund, generous alumni organization, and an exceptionally high amount of dollars coming from research grants.
So, just to clarify, UT starts with highly prepared students and surrounds them with instructors who are the top in the field, fist-rate laboratories, lovely campus, and fabulous weekend music.
Strong Children, I was referring to UT as the abbreviation for Utah. I can understand your confusion. My comment was directed at Doug and his ad hominem attack on Republicans: “…complain about money for education.” He, like all leftists, seems to think money is the root of evil, yet will solve everything if stolen from taxpayers and given to the government.
Not Dave….Oooooh. Utah, not University of Texas! So yes, Utah is way above the average for educational results related to educational dollars spent.