DENVER – A shooting on New Year’s Day in Denver’s Harvey Park neighborhood started as an altercation that ended with one man dead and another one injured, police said in an affidavit unsealed Tuesday.
The shooting at a home on S. Zenobia Street near the intersection with W. Harvard Ave. in southwest Denver was reported at around 1:31 a.m. Monday. On the front yard of the property, police discovered one of the victims, who had been shot multiple times, including once in the head. The man was pronounced deceased at a hospital just before 2 a.m.
The second victim – also a man – was found suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the face, neck and abdomen. He was taken to Denver Health where he was rushed into surgery. He was listed in critical condition.
One of the witnesses told police that a friend threw a New Year’s Eve party at the home and invited several people. At that party, a man named Anthony asked if he could home, and the host agreed.
The witness told police that during the party, someone got into an altercation with the man – identified by police as 42-year-old Anthony Lynn Lopez – at which point someone at the home told Lopez to leave.
A short time later, the witness told police the altercation moved into the front yard, where eventually gunshots rang out. As the witness investigated what had happened, he saw two people had been shot and instructed his family to call police, according to the affidavit.
A woman later interviewed by police told investigators that as Lopez was leaving the home, she spotted him with a gun by his waist, “which he racked,” arresting documents show. The woman then asked him what he was doing with the gun, which Lopez responded that “he was getting his family out safely.
As he left, Lopez again encountered the person with whom he had the altercation and as he got to the street, he pointed the gun and “started shooting into the crowd of people in the front yard of the house,” the affidavit reads.
The woman told police she ran for her life as Lopez kept firing. Reaching out to one of the victims, she told police that one of the me “had a gun, and that he may have pulled it to return fire when the shooter started shooting into the crowd,” the documents show.
Lopez then left the scene of the crime. He was arrested hours later and is being held for investigation of first-degree murder.
Denver 7+ Colorado News Latest Headlines | January 2, 4pm
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