BROOMFIELD, Colorado — A suspect in a shooting at an apartment complex near Denver was arrested Thursday and taken to the hospital along with a female victim. Police said the shooting lasted four hours and that cars, other buildings and apartments were hit by gunfire.
After negotiating with the suspect for three and a half hours, officers entered an apartment in the Arista Flats complex in Broomfield, where he was holding a woman hostage. They then arrested the suspect, Broomfield police spokeswoman Rachel Haslett said.
Haslett said an officer inside the apartment fired his weapon, but she did not say whether anyone was hit.
“He was threatening to hurt people,” said Haslett, who would not release the suspect’s name or age and did not know what weapons he may have used.
The suspect and female victim were taken to a hospital, Haslett said. The nature of their injuries was not immediately known.
Police responded to reports of gunfire at the apartment complex as people were getting ready for work in Broomfield, a city of about 75,000, mostly middle-class, about 15 miles northwest of Denver.
Authorities sent a telephone warning to residents to stay home or evacuate.
Haslett said she did not know how many shots were fired during the confrontation.
“But I’ll tell you, they were fired sporadically during the trial, so we didn’t hear them for a while. And then another shot would be fired. So it wasn’t all at once,” she told reporters.
Heather Tallant said she was walking her dog outside her room when a bullet or projectile flew over her head and through her bedroom window.
“I saw it hit my window, and then I was gone,” said Tallant, who ran barefoot from the building past the police line after the shooting ended. “I was getting shot,” she said, sitting on the ground.
Nate Schamel, who lives across the street from the Arista Flats, told The Associated Press he first heard sirens around 6:45 a.m.
“I heard more and went outside to my balcony. I saw a Broomfield PD officer pull up across the street, get out with his gun, cock it and run down the street. I asked what was going on and he told me to go inside,” Schamel said in a text message.
He said he called an officer next to his house at 7:30 a.m. and asked what was going on. The officer told him and his wife to evacuate.
“This happened after we had already heard multiple gunshots (from what sounded like multiple different weapons) and as we were leaving we heard another 4-5 gunshots,” he wrote.
Amy Johnson Kemner, who lives on the floor above the suspect, said she was in bed when she heard a loud bang that sounded like nails being hammered into floorboards. Then she heard sirens.
“Then I heard a really loud banging noise, it didn’t sound like anyone was hammering anything in,” she said.
Kemner, 46, said that as she walked down the stairs she was greeted by shouts from a SWAT team telling her to barricade herself in her apartment.
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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Rachel Haslett’s name, which in one instance was misspelled as “Hazlett.”
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Hanson reported from Helena, Montana.