Two suspects arrested in deadly downtown Denver shooting
By Keith Coffman
DENVER (Reuters) - Two men have been arrested in a shooting on a street corner in downtown Denver in which one person was killed and four others wounded, including one of the two suspects, the city's police chief said on Tuesday.
Chief Paul Pazen also said that Monday's late-afternoon barrage of gunfire in the area known as LoDo, a bustling district of hotels, restaurants and high-rise residential lofts, was a "targeted" attack, not random.
He did not offer an explanation for what precipitated the violence. But police spokesman Doug Schepman said detectives were examining a range of possible motives, including whether the shooting may have been gang- or drug-related.
Official details about the circumstances of the incident, which sent bystanders diving for cover at the start of the evening rush hour, remained sketchy.
The Denver Post cited a witness as saying he saw a 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 added that he heard roughly six gunshots and that one person in the crowd appeared to have returned gunfire at the assailant's car as it drove away. The witness also said the people targeted by the gunman appeared to be transients or homeless.
Pazen confirmed that there was an "exchange of gunfire," and that one suspect, later identified as Josh Hayward, 24, fled the scene in a vehicle and was arrested on Tuesday morning. He was being held on suspicion of first-degree murder, police said.
The second suspect, Dashae Armstrong, 24, who was one of the four wounded survivors, was being held on a federal weapons charge, the chief said.
Police said on Monday that none of the injuries sustained by survivors was believed to be life-threatening.
The bloodshed in Colorado's capital was one of at least two incidents of gun violence involving multiple victims in major U.S. cities on Monday. It 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, police said.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)
