DENVER — At least 10 people — including a suspect — were injured in an overnight shooting in downtown Denver as initially jubilant street celebrations following the Nuggets’ NBA basketball championship victory turned potentially deadly.
Three victims were hospitalized in critical condition, Denver police said, after multiple shots were fired near the intersection of Market and 20th streets. Police took a man suspected of firing shots into custody, and confirmed Tuesday morning that he, too, was wounded.
Three victims remained in critical condition, police said Tuesday morning. The suspect had an injury that was not life-threatening.
“We took him into custody pretty quickly and without incident,” Denver police spokesman Douglas Schepman said.
Thousands of people had gathered about a mile north of Ball Arena, where the Denver Nuggets beat the Miami Heat on Monday night to win the NBA championship.
Fights broke out and multiple shots were fired after an altercation involving several people near 20th and Market around 12:30 a.m., Schepman said. Police investigators on Tuesday were trying to determine who shot the suspect as part of a “complex investigation.”
Thousands of people were still in the area around Market and 20th, though crowd numbers had begun to decrease when the altercation broke out.
“I thought it was safe when I went out last night. We had all that armory that was out there, all the police officers, basically like a military guard,” downtown resident Scott Dangelo, 55, said in an interview Tuesday morning.
He was walking near concrete barriers beside police officers shortly after midnight, without his hearing aids in.
“I thought it was just more fireworks going off. The percussion kind of startled me… The police officers were dropping down on their knees. I’m live-streaming. Next thing I know the officers dive in and are pointing their weapons. They were pointing to where the shots were. A lady got shot, like, 10 feet away from me. Another person was struck. It was pretty crazy,” Dangelo said.
“I had an asthma attack because of all the gunpowder,” said Dangelo, who sometimes uses a respirator and who has lived downtown for years and experienced riots following the first Colorado Avalanche Stanley Cup victory and Denver Broncos Super Bowl victories.
“This was pretty, I don’t know how to put it into words. … The police officers were, like, diving down in front of me reaching for their weapons. I was trying to figure out what was going on. I thought they were pointing weapons at me. I thought they thought maybe I had a gun,” Dangelo said.
He estimated more than a dozen shots were fired. He saw bullet casings near where he crouched, shooting video and photos that police later asked him to share as evidence to help with their investigation.
“It was sad. … Something needs to be done,” he said. “I did not expect a major shooting with so many victims.”
Before the shooting, Denver police, anticipating possible post-game trouble, “had staffed up significantly,” Schepman said. “We had a lot of officers in that immediate area of 20th and Market when the shooting occurred, which is why the response to it was so quick. ….. We had a plan to manage the flow of traffic from the Ball Arena out to the highway and down Speer Boulevard.”
In the crowd near 20th and Market, he said, “people would start, like, a small fight. And officers would go in and extinguish and disperse that.”
Other incidents reported nearby downtown overnight included smashing out of vehicle windows and a separate shooting on Tremont Street, which left a man hospitalized. Police were investigating the circumstances that led up to that shooting.
A victim of the shooting at 20th and Market called for help from Blake Street and then went to a hospital on his own, police said.
According to the non-profit Gun Violence Archive, there have been 291 mass shootings in the United States so far this year. Gun violence deaths overall had reached 19,161, the archive data drawn from law enforcement agencies showed.
In Denver, a celebratory parade is planned for Thursday morning downtown featuring Nuggets basketball players on floats.
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