Denver police shot an armed man twice during fireworks investigation

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Denver, CO - A man was shot twice by police investigating fireworks earlier this month when he allegedly pulled out a gun and, when shot, threw it into the rocks next to a Denver home, police said.

Two Denver officers were investigating fireworks in the city’s Montbello neighborhood just after 9 p.m. on July 1. While driving, the pair found a group of people standing next to a fireworks' launcher outside a house in the 4300 block of Del Rio Court.

Less than 20 seconds after they arrived, one officer shot a man twice in the house’s driveway, body-worn-camera video released by the Denver Police Department shows.

That man, who has not been publicly identified, had begun to retreat into the house’s garage when police arrived, the video shows.

“What are you walking away for as soon as the cops show up?” one officer can be heard asking on the video. “Get back over here.”

That officer starts to follow the man up the driveway, but the officer stops and pulls out his gun.

“Get your (expletive) hand out of your waistband,” the officer says, raising his gun toward the man. “Hands up! Hands up!”

The man appeared to be arming himself and was looking over his shoulder with his back to the officer, Matt Clark, commander of the Denver Police Department’s Major Crimes Division, said in a Wednesday news conference.

In the body-worn-camera video, the man appears to be turning toward the officer with his hands in the air when the officer fires twice. It’s unclear if anything is in his hands because of a blur placed over the man’s head by the police department.

The man isn’t holding a gun when he collapses to the ground, the video shows.

Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas called the officer’s actions a “reasonable response” in the news conference.

“His movements were obvious, he was accessing that weapon, he did have a weapon, the officer recognized that he had a weapon,” Thomas said. “…It’s just fractions of a second that it would take someone to move from a place where they have a weapon in their hand to where that weapon is being pointed at that officer and shots being fired.”

The man was shot in the leg and is expected to survive, Clark said.

“Oh my god,” the second officer can be heard saying on video from her own body-worn camera. “Wait, does he have a gun?”

The officer who shot the man tells his partner that the man threw the gun into the rocks on the side of the house, but the body-worn-camera video does not show either officer retrieving it.

Investigators recovered a loaded handgun from the rocky area next to the house after the shooting, Clark said.

Thomas said the man threw the gun after he was shot.