The shooting deaths of three people in the span of a week, including a man walking his dog and two people at an Easter picnic in a public park, have rattled the north Denver neighborhoods of Five Points and Cole, leading to calls for a community meeting and increased police presence.
“This is heartbreaking,” Denver City Councilman Darrell Watson said in an interview Wednesday. “Within seven days, three community members have lost their lives to senseless violence that was a direct impact of gun violence within our communities.”
Watson has scheduled a meeting Thursday night so people can come together to “offer condolences,” support each other and learn what the Denver Police Department is doing to increase safety. In multiple conversations over the past week, Watson said residents have asked for heightened police patrols and answers to why the shootings happened.
“One thing that was needed was clarity and communication from my office and from DPD that the neighborhood was safe and that there are steps that we can take together to continue to increase safety,” he said.
The violence has been particularly scary for community members because of its randomness.
The first death came on Easter Sunday as a few dozen people gathered at Russell Square Park, at Vine Street and East 37th Avenue, in the Cole neighborhood. Shots came from a vehicle circling the park, and some people in the crowd at the picnic fired back. A 43-year-old woman died.
The woman was caught in the crossfire, with authorities determining that she was accidentally shot by someone firing from the park who intended to fire toward the circling vehicle in self-defense.
“The fact that she lost her life for being in a place where this ugly violence occurred? That is shattering,” Watson said. “It is something that is increasing community desire for some type of resolution, some type of communication from Denver police and from my office that we are taking steps to make sure that in our most mundane spaces, in our communities where we celebrate and we come together, that we are safe.”
After the shootout, families at the picnic scattered, leaving food sitting on tables.
An 18-year-old man shot at the Easter party died from his injuries on April 12. The Denver District Attorney’s Office decided not to charge the person who shot the woman, determining that the killing was an accident. Charges for other crimes, possibly weapons related, are possible, authorities said. Police are still searching for the people in the vehicle and have not yet said whether the shot that killed the 18-year-old came from the vehicle or the park.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated event, a man walking his dog down a sidewalk in Five Points last week was shot and killed merely because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I understand how scary that is because it is truly random,” Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas told The Sun. “Most of our shooting incidents are not random at all. They’re actually very targeted, but this seems very random.”
Before the shooting victim had come by with his dog, a man and a woman were fighting in the street, police said. Bystanders helped the woman get into a car, and the man she had been fighting with fired shots toward the vehicle, witnesses reported. The man went into a house but then came back outside soon after.
Moments later, the victim walked by and the man involved in the domestic violence incident pointed the gun at him and shot him, witnesses said. The “individual who just happened to be walking their dog down the block” was killed “for no apparent reason,” the police chief said.
A 22-year-old man was arrested after that shooting.
The three shooting deaths in Watson’s city council district were not the only ones in Denver last week. Two other people died after being shot in other neighborhoods, including a man killed in the South Broadway area very early Easter morning, around 2 a.m. after the bars closed. The shooting followed a confrontation between two people, the police chief said.
In a separate incident, Denver police shot a man April 7 who had pointed a gun and hid in an alley for more than an hour in the Westwood neighborhood. He later died.
“This spate of violence that we’re experiencing right now has been unusual,” Chief Thomas said in an interview Wednesday.
“What we know is that none of these events are tied together at all, so it’s not an indication of some sort of gang war or any kind of situation like that,” he said. “All but the one with the individual walking their dog, all of them were sort of targeted events where there was an altercation between individuals or groups and then shots were fired.”
Denver police officials plan to attend the community meeting Thursday night, which is scheduled for 6 p.m. at St. Charles Recreation Center.
For now, the police chief is calling the violence a “temporary spike.” Thomas noted that Denver homicides are still “far below our three-year average.” He said that 2025 was a “remarkably safe year, with only 37 homicides.” By this point in 2024, there had already been 28 homicides. So far this year, there have been 17.
“With every shooting incident that occurs, we take a very deep look to see what commonalities there may be and what opportunities there may be to lessen the violence that’s occurring,” he said.
Thomas said patrols have already increased in Five Points and Cole since the shootings and that they will continue. He said the goal is to increase police presence, but not to increase police contacts or over-police the communities. Five Points and Cole are racially diverse neighborhoods. Five Points is a historically Black neighborhood, though today it is about 60% white.
“We certainly understand some of the fear that has taken over in the community,” he said. “We want to make sure that people see officers and understand that we are in this neighborhood. We don’t want to have an increase in contacts. I don’t know that leads to safer neighborhoods but certainly leads to additional distrust.”
Denver Police and the Denver Sheriff Department are both dealing with staffing shortages. Officers likely will have to work overtime hours to cover the increased patrols, Watson said.