DENVER, Colo. — Residents in the East Colfax neighborhood woke up to a confusing surprise on Wednesday.
“I figured [it] out when I drove down the street and saw someone coming at me,” said longtime resident Monique Helstrom.
That’s when Helstrom, president of the East Colfax Neighborhood Association, realized that East 14th Avenue had turned from a one-way to a two-way road in the middle of the day.
No advance notice from the city, she said — just cones, broken signs, and lots of confusion.
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“There was a lot of incoming traffic, there was a lot of turning, there was a lot of not knowing what to do,” she continued.
The City of Denver had plans for some time now to turn East 13th and 14th Avenues from Quebec to Yosemite into two-way streets to reduce speeding in the East Colfax neighborhood.
Speed data captured from April to October 2023 found most drivers on these streets were traveling at greater than 40 miles an hour, while the speed limit was posted at 30 mph.
It’s a solution neighbors have been wanting for a while, but according to Helstrom, the rollout could have been better.
“For the last, I want to say, two weeks, the only reader board signs on the Quebec side and the Yosemite side said, ‘new traffic pattern coming soon’. That was it. Not ‘two-way’. No date — just ‘new traffic pattern’,” she said.
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Denver District 8 Councilwoman Shontel M. Lewis took to social media on Wednesday afternoon to let residents know about the change, telling Denver7 she found out about the conversion at the same time neighbors did.
“This was a safety measure, and in poorly executing a safety measure, we then created unsafe conditions,” Lewis said.
Denver7 took these concerns to the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI).
“We realize there was more we could have done, and should have done, to communicate with the adjacent neighborhoods and are going to work on making sure we do better in the future,” a DOTI spokesperson said. “We did this rollout and conversion to two-way in fairly rapid fashion – over the course of just a couple of days. And so we recognize it may have been confusing to people at first. That said, DOTI staff have been driving the corridors today and it appears that drivers are understanding and following the new configuration pretty well.”
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Denver7 observed city crews installing permanent signage going up on both roads on Friday morning, further alleviating some of the days-long confusion.
“See how everybody’s driving slow? It’s already working. It’s already working,” Vince Saaverdra told us as he put up the signs.
DOTI said cones will remain in the center line on both corridors for some time to help make the new two-way configuration more obvious to drivers.
All-way stops will be installed on 13th and 14th avenues at Uinta and Willow streets as part of the city’s traffic calming efforts in the neighborhood.
The speed limit on both streets has also been reduced to 25 mph as part of the new traffic configuration.
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Denver7 | Your Voice: Get in touch with Adria Iraheta
Denver7’s Adria Iraheta shares stories that have an impact in all of Colorado’s communities, but specializes in reporting on education and stories in Arapahoe County. If you’d like to get in touch with Adria, fill out the form below to send her an email.
An 18-year-old pedestrian died Saturday after being injured in an Aurora hit-and-run 11 days earlier, police said.
Aurora police responded to the hit-and-run crash near East Colfax Avenue and North Sable Boulevard at about 9 p.m. on Jan. 20, according to a news release from the police department.
The 18-year-old was crossing Colfax against the traffic signal when an SUV struck him, police said. The SUV driver then fled the scene.
Paramedics took the pedestrian to the hospital, where he died from his injuries on Saturday, according to the release. He will be identified by the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office.
Talal Maaliki, a 71-year-old man believed to be driving the SUV, was arrested just hours after the crash and charged with leaving the scene of an accident resulting in serious bodily injury, according to Arapahoe County court records. Additional charges may be filed by the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office stemming from the pedestrian’s death.
An Aurora pedestrian died Saturday night after being hit by a car while crossing the street, police said.
The pedestrian, a 43-year-old man who has not been publicly identified, was walking west across Peoria Street at East Colfax Avenue outside of the crosswalk when he was hit, according to a news release from the Aurora Police Department. The crash happened just before 11 p.m. Saturday.
He was also crossing against the traffic signal, police said. The white Ford SUV that hit the man while driving south on Peoria Street had a green light.
Paramedics took the man to the hospital, where he later died, police said. He will be identified by the Adams County Coroner’s Office.
Speed and alcohol are not believed to be factors in the crash, according to the Aurora Police Department.
As of Sunday evening, no charges were expected to be filed in the crash “unless additional details are obtained through the investigation and/or reconstruction of the scene,” police said.
On Feb. 14, 2022, a Starbucks manager pulled Michaela Sellaro aside for a meeting.
Just a few weeks earlier, Sellaro and a group of her fellow baristas at the coffee shop at 2975 East Colfax Ave. in Denver informed the company’s CEO that they planned to organize a union.
In the early afternoon, at a table by the windows, the store and district managers sat Sellaro down for a chat. The message, though light and breezy, was clear: “You know Starbucks’ stance is that we don’t need a union to represent our partners,” Kaylin Driscoll, the district manager, told Sellaro, according to a recording reviewed by The Denver Post.
Relationships with leadership will degrade if employees vote to organize, the managers told her. Promotions could be nixed. Benefits might change.
“The dynamic of having those conversations will change with a union,” said Ariel Rodriguez, the store’s manager, in the recording. “I have no personal desire to be part of a store that has to work through a union to have those conversations with you. I have zero interest in that.”
The East Colfax store, which the company has since closed, represents one of 18 Starbucks cafes in Colorado that have unionized since 2022, despite the Seattle-based coffee giant’s well-documented union-busting activity. What started with one unionized store in Buffalo, New York, in 2021 has blossomed into a nationwide movement encompassing 640 locations and thousands of workers around the United States.
Union supporter Pete DeMay of Chicago chants into a bullhorn along with other picketers during a labor organizing action at the Starbucks location at 2975 E. Colfax Ave. in Denver on Friday, March 11, 2022. (Photo by Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post)
Starbucks has nearly 18,300 locations, company-operated and licensed, across the U.S. and Canada. So far, despite the rapid growth in organizing, fewer than 4% of Starbucks workers are employed in unionized stores.
Starbucks has fought these efforts tooth and nail along the way. The National Labor Relations Board, which regulates private sector union activity in the U.S., has found the company illegally fired workers in response to organizing, closed stores because of union votes and engaged in widespread unfair labor practices designed to quash workers’ efforts.
The coffee conglomerate is the biggest violator of labor law in modern history, according to Starbucks Workers United, the national union representing company workers. The NLRB and its judges have found Starbucks has committed more than 500 labor law violations, the union says. Workers have filed more than 1,000 unfair labor practice charges, including more than 125 since January. More than 700 unresolved charges remain.
Despite the hundreds of union votes over the past four years, baristas are still working without a contract. This month, 92% of union workers voted to authorize an open-ended unfair labor practices strike ahead of the holiday season. The vote comes after six months of Starbucks “refusing to offer new proposals to address workers’ demands for better staffing, higher pay and a resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges,” the union said in a news release.
On Nov. 13, more than 1,000 workers — from 65 stores in more than 40 cities, including Colorado Springs and Lafayette — walked off the job. The union said it was “prepared to continue escalating” its strikes if the company failed to deliver a new contract.
“Union baristas mean business and are ready to do whatever it takes to win a fair contract and end Starbucks’ unfair labor practices,” said Michelle Eisen, a Starbucks Workers United spokesperson and 15-year veteran barista. “We want Starbucks to succeed, but turning the company around and bringing customers back begins with listening to and supporting the baristas who are responsible for the Starbucks experience.
“If Starbucks keeps stonewalling, they should expect to see their business grind to a halt. The ball is in Starbucks’ court.”
The union’s push comes amid a wave of public support for organizing efforts. More than two-thirds of American adults approve of labor unions, according to Gallup polling, a level last reached in the 1950s and early 1960s. Support remains especially strong among young people — a demographic common for Starbucks baristas.
Starbucks representatives declined an interview request for this story. Sara Kelly, Starbucks’ chief partner officer, told employees in a letter this month that the company had bargained in good faith with the union, reaching more than 30 tentative agreements on full contract articles.
“Our commitment to bargaining hasn’t changed,” Kelly wrote. “Workers United walked away from the table, but if they are ready to come back, we’re ready to talk. We believe we can move quickly to a reasonable deal.”
Starbucks, she said, remains the best job in retail, paying, on average, $30 per hour for hourly workers once benefits are factored in.
The first Colorado union shop
But employees at Colorado’s first unionized cafe quickly learned the extent to which Starbucks would go to dissuade organizing efforts.
Harris didn’t know much about labor organizing, but she was intrigued. She and her colleagues were sick of the low compensation, of underscheduling and understaffing, and of not learning their weekly schedules until the night before.
Harris connected with the Buffalo workers over Twitter, and the resulting conversations helped launch the first Starbucks union efforts in Colorado.
Many of her colleagues were scared. One quickly told management about the plans.
Within a week, a rarely seen district manager suddenly showed up at the store, Harris said. Management organized an hour-long meeting about how the union was a bad idea, she said.
“They laid it on thick,” Harris said.
The day the workers officially filed with the NLRB, the Marshall fire broke out in Boulder County. As the blaze raged in Superior and Louisville, the Starbucks employees continued to work. Several staffers lost their own homes or were forced to evacuate.
Harris said she got a call that night from her manager, asking if she was OK. Then she said she was told to be at work first thing the next morning.
“It was a total exploitation of us,” Harris said.
As the vote neared, Starbucks amped up its anti-union activity, she said. Management initiated more two-on-one meetings with staff members. For many of the teenage baristas, this represented one of their first jobs. And here leadership was telling them that they wouldn’t be able to transfer stores or enjoy the perks that nonunion employees would receive, such as credit card tips.
Len Harris fires up the crowd during a rally at Trident Booksellers and Cafe in Boulder on Thursday, July 25, 2024. Harris helped to organize the first unionized Starbucks in Colorado, in Superior, before she was fired. (Matthew Jonas/Boulder Daily Camera)
“The individual intimidation was infuriating beyond belief,” Harris said. “I was sick to my stomach that they were taking advantage of these younger workers to terrify them.”
An executive flew in from Seattle and observed staff at work for weeks, Harris said. Management started cutting workers’ hours.
In April 2022, 12 of the 14 employees at the Superior location voted in favor of forming the union. The company, though, refused to negotiate with the newly formed body. So they went on strike in November, shutting down the store for the entire day.
The following day, Starbucks fired Harris, citing a policy about handling cash that she said she had never heard of. An administrative law judge with the NLRB later found the company had illegally fired Harris based on her union activity. She’s still waiting for tens of thousands of dollars in court-ordered back pay.
“I feel like I’ve gotten a peek behind the curtain to the levels of depravity that the company will sink to to take advantage of their employees,” she said.
The Starbucks playbook
The tactics Starbucks used to try to quash worker organizing in Superior are part of the playbook deployed by company leadership across Colorado and the rest of the country, according to interviews, NLRB documents and news reports.
Emily Alice Dinaro started organizing a Starbucks location on Denver’s 16th Street mall in 2022 because of what she saw as management’s failure to protect staff from violence, drug use and volatile customer interactions that were occurring daily.
After the union activity began, management started enforcing existing rules more strictly, while introducing new edicts, she said. Union supporters were singled out, and these new enforcement steps were used to push people out of the store, Dinaro said.
Out of the 26-person staff, 18 workers signed union cards, while 10 of them signed a letter to the Starbucks CEO informing him of their support. But the implementation of these new rules — concerning dress code, cell phone use and cash handling, among other things — forced widespread turnover at the store, Dinaro said. Only five people ended up voting in the union election, which passed successfully.
Dinaro was fired shortly after the vote over what the company said were repeated violations of its attendance and punctuality policy. In 2024, an NLRB judge ruled that Starbucks had fired her illegally due to her union activity.
“When I first started at Starbucks, I thought they were an outstanding, virtuous company,” Dinaro said. “I’ve come to learn they just have an outstanding PR team.”
Starbucks barista Brenna Bellfield holds roses, a symbol of the labor movement, in front of the unionized East Colfax location of Starbucks in Denver, Colorado, on Saturday, Jan. 2022. (Eli Imadali/Special to The Denver Post)
A Starbucks spokesperson, in a statement to The Post this month, said the company “respects our partners’ right to choose through a fair and democratic process, to be represented by a union or not to be represented by a union.”
But federal judges have repeatedly said otherwise. The NLRB, time and again, has found that Starbucks violated the National Labor Relations Act in dealings with employees and their efforts to unionize.
The coffee giant shuttered a store in Colorado Springs in 2022 shortly after its workers voted to unionize and one day before a requested bargaining date. The NLRB, the following year, ordered Starbucks to reopen that store, along with 22 others around the country, because the company had failed to give notice to labor groups.
The NLRB invalidated another union election at a different Colorado Springs location in 2022, finding that management threatened employees through “highly coercive” questioning and “textbook unlawful interrogation.” One manager gave “dire” warnings to workers that unionized stores would not receive certain benefits, such as pay raises.
In several instances, Starbucks violated federal law by firing Colorado workers over pro-union activities, the NLRB found.
The company has employed these same tactics to dissuade union activity across the country.
Federal labor regulators in 2022 asked a court to force Starbucks to stop the company’s “virulent, widespread and well-orchestrated response to employees’ protected organizing efforts.”
Starbucks has refused to divulge how much it has spent on its response to worker organizing campaigns. A federal judge in 2023 ordered the company to comply with a U.S. Department of Labor subpoena seeking expenditure documents for its investigation into the company’s compliance with the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.
“We will not sit idly by when any company, including Starbucks Corp., defies our request to provide documents to make certain they are complying with the law,” Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda said in a statement at the time.
Howard Schultz, the coffee chain’s billionaire founder, has said the unionization drive felt like an attack on his life’s work. In previous speeches to his employees, he has cast the union as “a group trying to take our people,” an “outside force that’s trying desperately to disrupt our company” and “an adversary that’s threatening the very essence of what (we) believe to be true.”
Sharon Block, a former NLRB member under President Obama and a professor at Harvard Law School, said the coffee giant has used a tried-and-true playbook to stifle union activity. But with weak federal laws and a National Labor Relations Board that has been stunted by the Trump administration, she said, there is little incentive for unscrupulous companies to play by the rules.
“This is a continuing pattern of behavior that sends a signal to the workers that this is a company that will do almost anything to stop them,” she said in an interview.
Starbucks has earned the distinction as a model for unlawful corporate union busting, the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, wrote in a January article. The National Labor Relations Act lacks teeth, making companies more than willing to accept a few slaps on the wrist in order to achieve their broader goals, the report’s author noted.
“There is no mystery as to why corporations like … Starbucks … violate the (law) with such regularity: Crime pays great dividends, as it produces the desired chilling effect on worker organizing and as corporations consider the law’s paltry sanctions an insignificant price to pay to prevent unionization through fear and disruption,” the article states. “The penalties for violating the (law) are utterly meaningless for multibillion-dollar corporations.”
‘No contract, no coffee’
Despite these aggressive union-busting efforts, Starbucks workers continue to organize in Colorado and across the country.
Unionized shops in Colorado have grown to 17 stores, including five in Denver. More than 640 member stores have joined the cause since 2022, making the drive one of the fastest organizing efforts in modern history, according to Starbucks Workers United.
Now workers want a contract.
The union and the company conducted their first bargaining session in April 2024, meeting monthly that summer. In December, however, the union says Starbucks backtracked on the agreed-upon path forward. Starbucks Workers United accused the company of failing to bargain in good faith.
In April, the company rejected Starbucks’ package. The two sides have yet to return to the bargaining table.
Workers voted overwhelmingly on Nov. 5 to authorize an open-ended unfair labor practice strike. The union on Nov. 13 turned Starbucks’ Red Cup Day — an annual free cup giveaway around the holiday season — into a “red cup rebellion,” forcing the closure of nearly all 65 stores where workers were striking.
Starbucks Workers United said they planned to continue escalating the strike, warning that it could be the “largest, longest strike in company history” if the company refuses to deliver a fair contract.
Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, along with 24 of their Senate colleagues, wrote a letter this month to Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, pushing the company to end its “illegal union-busting efforts and negotiate a fair contract with its employees.”
“It is clear that Starbucks has the money to reach a fair agreement with its workers,” the senators wrote. “Starbucks must reverse course from its current posture, resolve its existing labor disputes, and bargain a fair contract in good faith with these employees.”
Jeremy Dixon, right, and Starbucks baristas picket outside a Starbucks store during a rally to demand a new union contract in Colorado Springs on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Kelly, Starbucks’ chief partner officer, said the company already offers the best overall wage and benefits package in retail. She touted strong benefits that include health care, 100% tuition coverage for a four-year college degree and up to 18 weeks of paid family leave. The union, she wrote, is proposing pay increases of 65% immediately and 77% over three years, along with other proposals that would “significantly affect store operations and customer experience.”
“These aren’t serious, evidence-based proposals,” Kelly wrote.
The union, though, says many workers don’t get enough hours to qualify for benefits. Starting wages for baristas, they say, are $15.25 an hour in a majority of states, though Denver’s minimum wage stands at $18.81, requiring higher rates. Barista positions listed on the company’s website start at $17 per hour in Colorado, while shift supervisor roles begin around $21 per hour.
Baristas in Fort Collins and Colorado Springs last month participated in a national wave of pickets as they demanded a fair contract and prepared to strike.
“No contract, no coffee!” workers and their allies shouted as they rallied outside a Starbucks cafe on South College Avenue in Fort Collins. “Respect our rights or expect our strikes!”
Drivers honked their horns in support, while supporters gave thumbs-down reactions to those frequenting the coffee chain.
Three days later, a dozen people picketed outside a cafe on Carmela Grove in Colorado Springs, chanting in call-and-response choruses.
“I’m proud so many other stores are willing to step up with us,” said Blue Taylor, a shift supervisor and strike captain at the store. The 19-year-old watched as the company, during the store’s unionizing drive, spread misinformation about the consequences of organizing and tried to dissuade workers from supporting the cause. It didn’t work.
Denver police said they are searching for a 26-year-old man suspected of murder in an early October killing.
A judge issued a first-degree-murder arrest warrant for Gabriel Ortiz Trujillo, described as a 5-foot-6, 100-pound Latino man with brown eyes and brown hair, police said.
Police said the killing happened about 9:25 p.m. Oct. 3 in the 8600 block of East Colfax Avenue.
Paramedics took the unidentified stabbing victim to a hospital, where the man later died, police said in an Oct. 4 update. He will be identified by the medical examiner’s office.
Anyone with information about Trujillo or the stabbing is asked to contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867. Tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a cash reward.
Denver prosecutors on Tuesday opened their long-awaited criminal case against former business owner Jay Bianchi, who is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting three women at his Grateful Dead-themed bars between 2020 and 2024, as well as drugging another man and a woman during that time period.
“This is not about character or lifestyles or choices the victims may have made,” said chief deputy DA Chris Curtis in his opening statements. “It’s not a memory test … (and) it’s absolutely not some kind of gigantic conspiracy against Jay Bianchi. So don’t get distracted. Focus on the evidence.”
Bianchi, 56, was arrested in April 2024 and charged with three counts of sexual assault dating to Oct. 31, 2020, in the 700 block of East Colfax Avenue; one count of unlawful sexual contact, a misdemeanor, on Nov. 1, 2020, in the 900 block of West First Avenue; and three counts of felony sexual assault on April 7, 2024, in the same block of West First Avenue.
He has pleaded not guilty on all counts.
The first sexual assault, alleged by Bonnie Utter, took place following a Halloween party at Sancho’s Broken Arrow, formerly at 741 E. Colfax Ave., in 2020. Utter’s friend Kylie Heringer, who worked as a sound engineer for Bianchi, also alleged that Bianchi groped her the next day in his office at So Many Roads Brewery, formerly at 918 W. First Ave., and that Bianchi attempted to discredit the women with character assassination and coercion. Both of his businesseshave since closed.
The Denver Post is identifying Utter and Heringer because they previously agreed to speak to the newspaper about their experiences.
Another woman identified during the proceedings alleged she was sexually assaulted by Bianchi in March 2024, and a man and a woman separately said that Bianchi drugged them — in the man’s case, for attempting to intervene in a conflict at Sancho’s. All will testify as part of the case, Curtis said.
Bianchi, dressed in a black jacket with a maroon tie, sat expressionless most of Tuesday as he watched each witness and speaker, occasionally taking notes. His case has been delayed multiple times as more people have come forward to make claims against him. Bianchi, who has several past arrests and convictions for drug charges and assault, has denied those allegations in multiple interviews with The Denver Post. His past convictions and arrests were not mentioned on Tuesday.
The trial, which could potentially last through mid-November, began Friday with a jury and evidence review that ran through Monday. On Tuesday, the first witnesses were called: a pair of police detectives and a former nurse from Denver Health who conducted a sexual-assault examination of Utter after she reported it on Nov. 1, 2020.
Bianchi’s defense team on Tuesday vigorously maintained his innocence. In her opening statements, deputy state public defender Megan Jungsun Lee previewed a strategy that will cast the prosecutor’s witnesses and experts as tainted by misinformation and rumors on social media, as well as news reports in The Denver Post and Westword.
“You will hear that during this time … that gossip, speculation assumptions were repeated again and again,” Lee said during opening statements. She also cast doubt on the years-long, on-and-off Denver Police Department investigation into the assaults, which she said had been compromised by the gossip-driven narrative and by news reports.
“Ms. Utter was alert,” Lee said of the events before the alleged assault on Nov. 1, 2020, noting that defense witnesses saw Bianchi and Utter “cuddled up.” The pair was laughing and holding hands as they went downstairs to the basement at Sancho’s that night, Lee said.
That’s where Utter said the assault took place. However, there was no evidence she was unable to make her own choices despite consuming alcohol, cocaine and cannabis that night, Lee said.
“(Bianchi) did not hand her a drink, touch her drink, offer her food or offer her drugs,” Lee added. “There is no evidence he caused her any kind of fear or made any threat. She was fully capable of exercising her own free will.”
The District Attorney’s Office spent much of Tuesday afternoon establishing the physical layout of So Many Roads with dozens of on-site photos, which included an unidentified substance in a baggie in Bianchi’s office, where Heringer’s assault allegedly took place.
In March 2024, a woman alleged she was raped by Bianchi, also at So Many Roads Brewery, which was co-owned by Tyler Bishop. That bar closed the next month, having been the subject of Denver Police Department stings for underage drinking and drug sales. Bianchi had also been the subject of protests outside the brewery in June 2021, after Utter and Heringer came forward to discuss their experiences, first on social media and later with The Denver Post. Local musicians who felt they had been mistreated by Bianchi rallied during the protest.
“We will sit here as long as it takes,” Curtis said, noting that the DA’s office will call a mix of eyewitnesses, detectives and experts who can comment on toxicology and crime lab results, sexual assault, consent, how memory works, and various firsthand details of the investigation.
Bianchi has been a fixture of Colorado’s jam-band scene for more than two decades, previously owning and booking bands at “Don Quixote”-inspired venues including Quixote’s True Blue, Dulcinea’s 100th Monkey, Be on Key Psychedelic Ripple, and Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom.
A man was struck and killed in a hit-and-run crash on East Colfax Avenue near Chambers Road on Tuesday night, according to the Aurora Police Department.
Colfax Avenue was closed between Laredo Street and Chambers Road at 7:23 p.m. because of the crash, Aurora police said on social media.
The victim, who was a pedestrian, died at the scene.
Further information about the driver who hit the man and fled the scene was not immediately available.
ENGLEWOOD — Metro Denver budtender Quentin Ferguson needs Regional Transportation District bus and trains to reach work at an Arvada dispensary from his house, a trip that takes 90 minutes each way “on a good day.”
“It is pretty inconvenient,” Ferguson, 22, said on a recent rainy evening, waiting for a nearly empty train that was eight minutes late.
He’s not complaining, however, because his relatively low income and Medicaid status qualify him for a discounted RTD monthly pass. That lets him save money for a car or an electric bicycle, he said, either of them offering a faster commute.
Then he would no longer have to ride RTD.
His plight reflects a core problem of lagging ridership that RTD directors increasingly run up against as they try to position the transit agency as the smartest way to navigate Denver. Most other U.S. public transit agencies, too, are grappling with a version of this problem.
In Colorado, state-government-driven efforts to concentrate the growing population in high-density, transit-oriented development around bus and train stations — a priority for legislators and Gov. Jared Polis — hinge on having a swift public system that residents ride.
But transit ridership has failed to rebound a year after RTD’s havoc in 2024, when operators disrupted service downtown for a $152 million rail reconstruction followed by a systemwide emergency maintenance blitz to smooth deteriorating tracks that led to trains crawling through 10-mph “slow zones.”
The latest ridership numbers show an overall decline this year, by at least 3.9%, with 40 million fewer riders per year compared with six years ago. And RTD executives’ newly proposed, record $1.3 billion budget for 2026 doesn’t include funds for boosting bus and train frequency to win back riders.
Frustrations intensified last week.
“What is the point of transit-oriented development if it is just development?” said state Rep. Meg Froelich, a Democrat representing Englewood who chairs the House Transportation, Housing and Local Government Committee. “We need reliable transit to have transit-oriented development. We have cities that have invested significant resources into their transit-oriented communities. RTD is not holding up its end of the bargain.”
At a retreat this past summer, a majority of the RTD’s 15 elected board members agreed that boosting ridership is their top priority. Some who reviewed the proposed budget last week questioned the lack of spending on service improvements for riders.
“We’re not moving the needle. Ridership is not going up. It should be going up,” director Karen Benker said in an interview.
“Over the past few years, there’s been a tremendous amount of population growth. There are so many apartment complexes, so much new housing put up all over,” Benker said. “Transit has to be relied on. You just cannot keep building more roads. We’re going to have to find ways to get people to ride public transit.”
Commuting trends blamed
RTD Chief Executive and General Manager Debra Johnson, in emailed responses to questions from The Denver Post, emphasized that “RTD is not unique” among U.S. transit agencies struggling to regain ridership lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson blamed societal shifts.
“Commuting trends have significantly changed over the last five years,” she said. “Return-to-work numbers in the Denver metro area, which accounted for a significant percentage of RTD’s ridership prior to March 2020, remain low as companies and businesses continue to provide flexible in-office schedules for their employees.”
In the future, RTD will be “changing its focus from primarily providing commuter services,” she said, toward “enhancing its bus and services and connections to high-volume events, activity centers, concerts and festivals.”
But agency directors are looking for a more aggressive approach to reversing the decline in ridership. And some are mulling a radical restructuring of routes.
Funded mostly by taxpayers across a 2,345 square-mile area spanning eight counties and 40 municipalities — one of the biggest in the nation — RTD operates 10 rail lines covering 114 miles with 84 stations and 102 bus routes with 9,720 stops.
“We should start from scratch,” said RTD director Chris Nicholson, advocating an overhaul of the “geometry” of all bus routes to align transit better with metro Denver residents’ current mobility patterns.
The key will be increasing frequency.
“We should design the routes how we think would best serve people today, and then we could take that and modify it where absolutely necessary to avoid disruptive differences with our current route map,” he said.
Then, in 2030, directors should appeal to voters for increased funding to improve service — funds that would be substantially controlled by municipalties “to pick where they want the service to go,” he said.
Reversing the RTD ridership decline may take a couple of years, Nicholson said, comparing the decreases this year to customers shunning a restaurant. “If you’re a restaurant and you poison some guests accidentally, you’re gonna lose customers even after you fix the problem.”
The RTD ridership numbers show an overall public transit ridership decrease by 5% when measured over the 12-month period from August 2024 through July 2025, the last month for which staffers have made numbers available, compared with the same period a year ago.
Bus ridership decreased by 2% and light rail by 18% over that period. In a typical month, RTD officials record around 5 million boardings — around 247,000 on weekdays.
The precautionary rail “slow zones” persisted for months as contractors worked on tracks, delaying and diverting trains, leaving transit-dependent workers in a lurch. RTD driver workforce shortages limited deployment of emergency bus shuttles.
This year, RTD ridership systemwide decreased by 3.9% when measured from January through July, compared with that period in 2024. The bus ridership this year has decreased by 2.4%.
On rail lines, the ridership on the relatively popular A Line that runs from Union Station downtown to Denver International Airport was down by 9.7%. The E Line light rail that runs from downtown to the southeastern edge of metro Denver was down by 24%. Rail ridership on the W Line decreased by 18% and on R Line by 15%, agency records show.
The annual RTD ridership has decreased by 38% since 2019, from 105.8 million to 65.2 million in 2024.
A Regional Transportation District light rail train moves through downtown Denver on Friday, June 27, 2025. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Light rail ‘sickness’ spreading
“The sickness on RTD light rail is spreading to other parts of the RTD system,” said James Flattum, a co-founder of the Greater Denver Transit grassroots rider advocacy group, who also serves on the state’s RTD Accountability Committee. “We’re seeing permanent demand destruction as a consequence of having an unreliable system. This comes from a loss of trust in RTD to get you where you need to go.”
RTD officials have countered critics by pointing out that the light rail’s on-time performance recovered this year to 91% or better. Bus on-time performance still lagged at 83% in July, agency records show.
The officials also pointed to decreased security reports made using an RTD smartphone app after deploying more police officers on buses and trains. The number of reported assaults has decreased — to four in September, compared with 16 in September 2024, records show.
Greater Denver Transit members acknowledged that safety has improved, but question the agency’s assertions based on app usage. “It may be true that the number of security calls went down,” Flattum said, “but maybe the people who otherwise would have made more safety calls are no longer riding RTD.”
RTD staffers developing the 2026 budget have focused on managing debt and maintaining operations spending at current levels. They’ve received forecasts that revenues from taxpayers will increase slightly. It’s unclear whether state and federal funds will be available.
RTD directors and leaders of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, an environmental group, are opposing the rollback of RTD’s planned shift to the cleaner, quieter electric hybrid buses and taking on new debt for that purpose.
Colorado lawmakers will “push on a bunch of different fronts” to prioritize better service to boost ridership, Froelich said.
The legislature in recent years directed funds to help RTD provide free transit for riders under age 20. Buses and trains running at least every 15 minutes would improve both ridership and safety, she said, because more riders would discourage bad behavior and riders wouldn’t have to wait alone at night on often-empty platforms for up to an hour.
“We’re trying to do what we can to get people back onto the transit system,” Froelich said. “They do it in other places, and people here do ride the Bustang (intercity bus system). RTD just seems to lack the nimbleness required to meet the moment.”
Denver Center for the Performing Arts stage hand Chris Grossman walks home after work in downtown Denver on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
Riders switch modes
Meanwhile, riders continue to abandon public transit when it doesn’t meet their needs.
For Denver Center for the Performing Arts theater technician Chris Grossman, 35, ditching RTD led to a better quality of life. He had to move from the Virginia Village neighborhood he loved.
Back in 2016, Grossman sold his ailing blue 2003 VW Golf when he moved there in the belief that “RTD light rail was more or less reliable.” He rode nearly every day between the Colorado Station and downtown.
But trains became erratic as maintenance of walls along tracks caused delays. “It just got so bad. I was burning so much money on rideshares that I probably could have bought a car.” Shortly before RTD announced the “slow zones” last summer, he moved to an apartment closer to downtown on Capitol Hill.
He walks or rides scooters to work, faster than taking the bus, he said.
Similarly, Honor Morgan, 25, who came to Denver from the rural Midwest, “grateful for any public transit,” said she had to move from her place east of downtown to be closer to her workplace due to RTD transit trouble.
Buses were late, and one blew by her as she waited. She had to adjust her attire when riding her Colfax Avenue route to Union Station to manage harassment. She faced regular dramas of riders with substance-use problems erupting.
Morgan moved to an apartment near Union Station in March, allowing her to walk to work.
She still hoped to rely on RTD for concerts and nightlife, and to reach DIA for work-related flights at least once a month. But RTD social media posts have alerted her to enough delays on the A Line that she no longer trusts it, she said. To reduce her “anxiety” and minimize the risk of missing her flights, she shells out for rides — even though these often get stuck in traffic.
She and her boyfriend recently tried RTD again, riding a train to the 38th and Blake Station near the Mission Ballroom. They attended “an amazing concert” there, she said, and felt happy as they walked to the station to catch the train home.
A man on the platform collapsed backward, hitting his head. He was bleeding. She called 911. Her boyfriend and other riders gathered. She ran across the street to an apartment building and grabbed paper towels. RTD isn’t really to blame, but “I just wish they had a station platform attendant, or someone. I do not know head-injury first aid,” Morgan said.
The train they’d been waiting for came and went. An ambulance arrived. They got home late, the evening ruined, she said.
“His head cracked open. He had skin flaps hanging off his head. This was stuck in my head, at least for the rest of the night.”
Denver police are investigating a fat hit-and-run crash on the east side of town that killed a pedestrian early Monday morning.
The department announced the incident on X shortly before 1 a.m., saying a pedestrian had been struck and killed in the area of East Colfax Avenue and Trenton Street in Denver.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene, and delays in the area were expected as an investigation was launched.
Pa Reh, 21, will spend the rest of his life in the Colorado Department of Corrections without the possibility of parole, the mandatory sentence after he was convicted of first-degree murder by a Denver jury in July.
Kaing, 42, was unloading dessert from her car outside her family’s apartment building when Reh and three others began shooting at a passing car driven by people they had a dispute with.
She died at the scene in her son’s arms.
Kaing’s family, friends and community have described her as a vital part of the East Colfax neighborhood, where she served on the neighborhood association’s board of directors, volunteered at a nearby food bank and was quick to help anyone in need.
Kaing and her family had opened Taw Win Thai and Burmese Restaurant just six months before her death.
“Her murder was an unspeakable tragedy for her family, for her immigrant community and, frankly, for all of us in Denver,” Denver District Attorney John Walsh said in a statement Friday. “…That sentence cannot bring Ma Kaing back, but it can send the powerful message that violence will not be tolerated in Denver.”
A second man charged with first-degree murder in Kaing’s shooting, Lu Reh, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in May. Two others, Nu La and Swa Bay, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in July and have sentencing hearings set for September.
East Colfax Avenue was the best place to find a job. That’s what everyone told Sofia Roca.
Never mind the open drug use, the sex workers or the groups of other migrant women marching the sidewalks soliciting work at the very same Mexican restaurants and bakeries.
On East Colfax in Aurora, Colorado, bosses would speak Spanish and might be willing to hire someone like Roca — a 49-year-old immigrant from Colombia — without legal authorization to work. That was the rationale for going back each morning, fruitless as it was.
“Do you know how to cook Mexican food?” asked one woman when Roca inquired about a kitchen position. Roca’s accent was a giveaway: not Mexican.
“I can learn,” Roca replied in Spanish.
Responded the woman: “We’re not hiring.”
As record numbers of South Americans attempt to cross the U.S. southern border, many are landing in communities that are unprepared for them — and sometimes outright hostile.
Women are leaving Colombia, and to a greater extent Venezuela, to escape starvation and violence, to provide for their children and to seek medical care. They represent some of the more than 42,000 migrants who have arrived in the Denver area over two years. Many didn’t know anyone in Denver. But it was the closest city to which Texas was offering free bus rides, both to relieve pressure on its towns and to make a political point to liberal-leaning cities about immigration’s impact on the border.
Sofia Roca, an immigrant from Colombia, washes clothes at a laundromat in Aurora, Colorado, on March 29, 2024. Thomas Peipert/AP Photo
From Denver, untold numbers made their way to the suburb of Aurora, lured by cheaper rent and abundant Spanish speakers. But finding a job has been anything but easy, and women face their own particular challenges.
Last year, nearly 900,000 women and girls tried to cross the U.S. southern border, more than a fivefold increase over the last decade, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows. Like many of them, Roca came to the U.S. to help her children. Her adult daughter in Colombia suffers from lupus and can’t afford “the good medicines.”
After making it across the U.S. border, Roca told U.S. agents she was seeking asylum. She heard from a shelter worker in El Paso that Denver was offering migrants free housing and Texas would pay to get her there.
Roca arrived in November and stayed two weeks in a shelter. When she went looking for work along East Colfax, she observed an icy reception.
She didn’t know the benefits many recent migrants have received — specifically, a path to a temporary work visa and with it better-paying jobs — were causing resentment among Aurora’s large Mexican community. Many have loved ones in the country illegally or have themselves lived for years in the United States without legal permission to work.
Resentment for newcomers was building in another corner of Aurora, too — City Hall. Aurora officials in February had warned other communities against housing migrants there, vowing not to spend city money to help them. This summer, Aurora’s mayor repeated a landlord’s claim that a notorious Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment building. Even though police say that’s false, former President Donald Trump took up the claim, mentioning it at his campaign rallies. The mayor last month walked back some of his comments.
Roca never made a deliberate decision to settle in Aurora. To her, it wasn’t clear where Denver ended and Aurora began.
So when Roca’s time is almost up at the Denver shelter, she does the only thing she knows to do: She heads to East Colfax in Aurora.
A man standing by his truck outside a thrift store catches her attention. He says he can help her, but not in Colorado. She can come to Kentucky with him and his family.
Sofia Roca, poses for a portrait on March 29, 2024, as she prepares to leave Aurora, Colorado, in search of more reliable work in another state.Thomas Peipert/AP Photo
After more than a week of staying with the family in Kentucky, Roca learns the man’s wife works in el negocio, or “the business.” There is not much work in Kentucky, so she earns her money through sex work, she tells Roca, while her kids play a few feet away.
A few days later, a Mexican man in his 30s pulls up outside the couple’s trailer in a pickup truck.
He’d seen a picture of Roca and liked her — and would pay $1,000 for two nights with Roca, the wife says. Roca would keep $600, the couple would get $400.
In her month in the United States, Roca has come to understand she’ll have to make sacrifices in this country. But subjecting herself to the whims of a stranger in such an intimate and vulnerable way?
“No,” she tells the woman. “I’m not going anywhere with anyone.”
The man is told to leave. The insults start immediately.
How are you going to earn money, girl? asks the woman. You’re not going to just live here for free.
Back to Aurora and East Colfax Avenue.
On most days walking along Colfax, Roca says, men would solicit her for sex, holding up their fingers to signal how many hundreds of dollars they were willing to pay.
As she looked for work in March, she came across what looked like an old motel. A man behind a plexiglass window urged her to try the bar in the back.
At a few Mexican cantinas around Aurora and Denver, “ficheras,” as the women are known in Spanish, sell beers at a markup to men and pocket the profits. It can be a fast way to earn money, but also a route to sex trafficking.
“I don’t think I have to do that yet,” Roca said. “But this street — it only offers prostitution.”
Since returning to Aurora, Roca had discovered she has few options for establishing legal residence or working legally in the U.S. She told U.S. Border Patrol officials she plans to plead for asylum at her deportation hearing, but she doubts they will grant it.
Sofia Roca, an immigrant from Colombia, prepares to leave Aurora, Colorado, on March 29, 2024. Thomas Peipert/AP Photo
She had gotten in touch through Facebook with a friend from Colombia living in the northeastern U.S. “She’s told me she can get me a job at a hotel and I can stay with her,” she said.
Two days later, with about $80 in her pocket, Roca boarded a Greyhound bus paid for by the city of Denver. (The Associated Press is not identifying her new location. Roca is afraid the Cuban couple might seek her out after she spoke about them in the media.)
Roca’s friend followed through on her promises, connecting her to a job cleaning hotel rooms. She walks through the city with ease — and anonymously.
“It’s a huge difference from my life in Denver,” she says. “There’s less chaos, and no one has disrespected me.”
She’s not sure how long she’ll stay. But Sofia Roca will never live in Aurora, Colorado, again.
Denver-based artist, Anna Charney, works on a mural on the side of the Mango House.
Molly Cruse/Denverite
For the last few weeks, spray cans and aerial lifts have been scattered outside buildings along a stretch of East Colfax as teams of artists from all over the country gathered to participate in the fifth annual Colfax Canvas Mural Festival.
Among those artists is Danielle Seewalker, a Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta citizen from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a Denver-based artist who exploded onto the art scene in the last few years.
Over the last few days, SeeWalker and Cante Eagle Horse — a Denver-based tattooer and artist and member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe — worked together to design a mural on the side of DIA Market in Aurora.
Coming back from a ‘crappy experience’ with Vail
Earlier this year, the Town of Vail canceled SeeWalker’s residency after someone raised concerns about a piece of artwork she created — unrelated to the residency — commenting on the war in Gaza.
“It was a crappy experience,” SeeWalker said. “It violated First Amendment rights. The piece, ‘G is for Genocide,’ had nothing to do with my residency, it had nothing to do with Vail. It was something I had done months prior for a different exhibition.”
Indigenous artists Danielle SeeWalker and Cante Eagle Horse’s mural on the side of DIA Market in Aurora. Earlier this year, the Town of Vail canceled SeeWalker’s residency after someone raised concerns about a piece of artwork she created — unrelated to the residency — commenting on the war in Gaza.Molly Cruse/Denverite
SeeWalker did not only turn down other job opportunities because of the residency with the Town of Vail, but she also says that she was disappointed that she was not given a chance to defend her work.
Aaron Vega, the executive producer of Colfax Canvas, called SeeWalker’s experience earlier this year “gut-wrenching.”
But he believes mural festivals like Colfax Canvas, “do a great job of making sure that artists are seen and heard and have an opinion.”
“Mural festivals that really speak to the community, and work with artists like Danielle and make sure that they are seen and heard, I think, are going to be more valuable in the long run,” Vega said. “Because the truth is when we’re all gone … the thing that will be remembered is the art.”
Murals are ‘part of the landscape of our lives’
That same sentiment is shared by other mural artists.
“[Murals] become a substantial part of the landscape of our lives,” Denver-based artist Anna Charney said. “…What attracts me to murals is the power to bring artwork to various communities and see immediately how your artwork affects communities or neighborhoods or people individually.”
But unlike other art mediums, painting murals comes with its own unique set of challenges.
Battling Colorado’s unpredictable weather, a small army of wasps, cracking walls, chipped paint, and the occasional heckler are just a few of the challenges the Mango House team has faced over the last few days, but Ally Grimm — a street artist who goes by the pseudonym A.L. Grime — says that this is just a small price to pay for creating art that is accessible to the public.
“Often art gets put behind glass cases or behind closed doors,” A.L. Grime said. “So it’s awesome to get to share narratives out in the street and get to really leave our work with communities.”
Mural artists shine a light on the humanity of Venezuelan immigrants
SeeWalker and Cante Eagle Horse are just one of four teams of artists participating in this year’s Colfax Canvas Mural Festival.
Across a parking lot from the DIA Market, three Denver-based artists have spent the last few days painting the side of Mango House, a former JC Penney building that is now a community center for refugees.
“We’re painting Maria Corina Machado, who is the opposition leader in Venezuela,” Venezuelan-American artist Ally Grimm, or A.L. Grime, said. “Since Mango House is a refugee resource center, we wanted to paint someone who really represents this idea of going home.”
Ally Grimm, who goes by the pseudonym A.L. Grime, looks up at the mural of Maria Corina Machado — a Venezuelan opposition leader — she is painting with artists ILL.DES and Anna Charney on the side of Mango House in Aurora.Molly Cruse/Denverite
And while she and the rest of the Mango House artist team — ILL.DES and Anna Charney — started planning the mural before Aurora made national headlines about a “Venezuelan gang takeover,” she hopes that the mural provides “a reminder that at the end of the day, we’re all people and we all deserve a little bit of humanity.”
Colfax Canvas Mural Festival is on Saturday, Sept. 14, from noon to 5 p.m. at Fletcher Plaza in Aurora, at the intersection of Colfax and Emporia.
Colfax canvas artists work to finish the portrait of of the Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, on the side of Mango House. Artist A.L. Grime, a Venezuelan-American, says that Machado is a symbol of hope for many Venezuelan refugees.Molly Cruse/Denverite
DENVER — Excessive trash and open drug and alcohol use are just a few of the problems that have become part of daily life on the sidewalks outside East Colfax businesses.
Cuttin’-up Beauty Academy is located at the intersection of East Colfax and Ulster Street in Denver. Karen Hall started the beauty academy in 1996. Cuttin’-up offers cosmetology, barbering and esthrrtician courses for students preparing to get their license. Today, Cuttin’-up is a family business, Hall’s daughter, Chanele Simmons, serves as the Director.
Simmons told Denver7 that issues with the unhoused, drug use and trash collecting on the streets are progressively getting worse.
She said she usually starts her day by picking up trash from around her building, and asking anyone sleeping outside of the building to leave. She reports whats happening on East Colfax to Denver police, but is growing exhausted with the lack of change.
“I always fear for their safety, especially with a lot of us being women, a lot of the customers being seniors or even children. If they’re looking at the environment around another school, and then they’re looking at the environment around ours, I feel like it puts us in the back seat, said Simmons.”
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Businesses we spoke with agreed that the 2020 relocation of a covered RTD bus stop is exacerbating the issue.
The bus stop is located in front of Sarahi’s Kitchen, a new restaurant on East Colfax serving authentic Mexican food. Customers sitting next to the window have a full view of the bus stop.
“I’ve complained. I filed several complaints to both the RTD and the police department. They haven’t done much. They do come and do some patrolling, but at this point they need to take another action, said owner Jesus Pasion.
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Christian Zamora is the manager at El Chalate, which has been on East Colfax for 15 years. Over the years, they changed the hours they operate to close the restaurant earlier. They also installed a gate for more separation for the sidewalk.
“They would harass my customers to the point where my customers did not even want to come in. They didn’t want to even come eat our food here, just because they were scared of the things that could happen to them just walking from their car to our doors,” said Zamora.
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DPD told Denver7 that they are working to address the ongoing issues along East Colfax. They found that patrolling and arresting people does not stop them from coming back and committing the same crime. According to police, they use Place Network Investigators, or PSI, which focus on the larger area to find the network where these crimes are built and dismantling it.
In the meantime, businesses along East Colfax are eager to have the streets cleaned up.
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The truth is that little remains architecturally on the 130-year-old buildings worth salvaging, and that was the case even before the Wyman Historic District was designated in 1993 to save a neighborhood full of stately mansions of historic value. Like bulky monsters constructed in an ad-hoc manner from bits and pieces, storefronts had been added to the homes in 1938 to capitalize on the bustling commercial area on Colfax. The boxy additions are poorly executed.
And even before the current owners – Pando Holdings — purchased the buildings at Franklin and Colfax in 2017, they were in decline.
Sadly saving the old buildings by blocking their demolition until someone comes along with the desire, financial means and ability to structurally restore them is not the best way to protect the Wyman Historic District.
Signs of fire damage are apparent from the back of the vacant building at 1600 East Colfax Avenue in Denver on July 17, 2024. (Photo by Zachary Spindler-Krage/The Denver Post)
In March a fire rendered the homes unsound and the owner wants to abandon his already approved plans to preserve both houses as part of a mixed-use development with a seven-story residential building on the large parking lots behind the homes.
Denver’s Landmark Preservation Commission rejected the demolition permit requested by Pando Holdings and developer Kiely Wilson.
But allowing the buildings to sit structurally damaged, vacant and badly burned for an indeterminate amount of time is doing more damage to Wyman than their demolition.
The fire was possibly started by people using the empty buildings for shelter – although the Denver Fire Department has not been able to determine a cause yet. The remaining structures are unsound and a safety hazard to anyone else who might try to enter the fenced-off area, whether that’s homeless individuals or Denver teens looking for a fun graffiti pallet.
Demolition seems to be the best path forward.
That is not to say that we don’t sympathize with the Preservation Commission’s consternation over the turn of events.
A plan was in place to save the buildings, and if they are demolished there is less ability to ensure that the developer will build something compatible with the historic district. The commission has more teeth when it comes to preserving a historic building and can even order repairs on buildings so homeowners don’t intentionally allow a historic structure to decay beyond the point of salvage so they can demolish it. Do we suspect that Pando Holdings is guilty of such a nefarious practice? If there was evidence of wrongdoing, no one has named it.
Even with demolition, the commission still has review power over plans for new development in historic districts, even on non-conforming structures and on vacant lots. The goal is to make sure that a new build does not “adversely affect the character-defining features of the overall historic district.”
That’s still a pretty high bar for any new plans at the five-point intersection of East Colfax, Park Avenue, and Franklin Street.
Barring revelations of a plot to avoid preserving the buildings via neglect, we think the commission must recognize that the fire dramatically altered the feasibility of plans to save the homes and storefronts on East Colfax.
Pando Holdings and Wilson surely must recognize that their reputation is on the line if they replace the buildings with anything that isn’t a net gain for the community in terms of aesthetically pleasing, historic façades on East Colfax.
Denver police are investigating after a man was shot and killed in the city’s East Colfax neighborhood Wednesday night.
Denver officers were on the scene of the shooting — near the intersection of East Colfax Avenue and Spruce Street — at 8:21 p.m. Wednesday, according to a statement from the city’s police department.
Paramedics transported one person — only identified as an adult male by police — to a local hospital, where he later died from his injuries, according to a 9 p.m. update. The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner will release the victim’s identity and official cause of death at a later time.
The investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made, according to police.
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.
Crews are fighting the fire from the outside and working their way in due to the complicated nature of the structure and current wind conditions, the agency said in a 2:20 p.m. update.
