Four people shot, one fatally, in downtown Denver

 

DENVER: A shooting on a downtown Denver street corner on Monday left one person dead and three others hospitalized with bullet wounds as investigators sought at least one suspect who remained at large, according to a police spokesman.

The three surviving victims were initially said to be in critical condition, but police later said in a Twitter message that their injuries were “believed to be non-life threatening.”

No further official details were immediately available about the incident, which erupted about 4 pm in the lower downtown area of Denver known as LoDo, a district filled with hotels, restaurants and high-rise residential lofts.

The area is fairly close to Coors Field, which is home to Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies.

An eyewitness quoted by the Denver Post told the newspaper he saw a single gunman open fire with a pistol on a group of people, then get into the driver’s seat of his car, slam the door shut and speed away.

The witness told the newspaper that he heard roughly half a dozen gunshots and that one person in the crowd who was fired on returned gunfire at the assailant’s car as it sped from the scene. Derani said the people targeted by the gunman appeared to be transients or homeless, according to the account.

The bloodshed in Denver came a short time after an unrelated shooting at a hospital in Chicago where a gunman killed a doctor, a pharmaceutical assistant and a police officer before the suspect was himself shot to death, according to police.

Denver police spokesman Doug Schepman told reporters that four people were confirmed shot in the Colorado capital, with one of the victims pronounced dead at the scene, and that no suspects were immediately arrested.

“We don’t know right now whether there was one shooter or more than one,” he said, adding that investigators had yet to determine what may have precipitated the gunfire and whether the assailant or assailants knew any of the victims.

“It’s too early to say what happened and why,” he told reporters. “To have multiple gunshots fired in an area like this is quite concerning.”

Schepman said witnesses had told police of a possible fifth victim, a woman, who they thought might have been shot in the leg, but he said officers had been unable to locate such a person.

He also acknowledged that there had been a homicide a couple of blocks away on Sunday, but added: “At this time we do not have information that connects these two incidents.”