Two young girls took cover behind a car when a shooter opened fire on a family gathering in a Denver park Sunday afternoon.
No older than 10, they cried and shook and hid — unhurt. But around them, six children and three adults were shot. People screamed, and ran, and bled up and down the block. One man was hit by a car as he fled the shooting, which marred what had been a quiet Sunday afternoon and brought the total number of people injured by gunfire in Denver this year to a three-year high.
A 3-year-old girl, 11-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy were shot during what police believe was a drive-by attack in the Byers & Pecos Park in the 1400 block of West Byers Place. Three 17-year-olds were also shot — two boys and one girl, according to Denver police.
The shooting happened about 4:30 p.m. while a group was having a picnic, according to police and witness accounts. All of the injured people are expected to survive.
The adults who were shot include a 27-year-old woman, 19-year-old man and 22-year-old man. Another 22-year-old man was struck by the car as he fled.
“It was just pandemonium,” said Elizabeth Sterling, who lives on the street.
A motive for the attack was not immediately clear Sunday and police did not release any suspect info. No arrests have been made.
Mayor Michael Hancock in a statement Monday called the shooting unacceptable and said Denver police will increase their efforts to stop rising violence in the city.
The nine people shot brings the city’s total number of people injured, but not killed, in shootings so far this year to 128 — more than recorded in the same time period the previous two years. The city is also on track to see the highest number of homicides in the past decade.
Last year, 84 people were injured in shootings between Jan. 1 and Aug. 10, according to police data obtained by The Denver Post through a records request. In 2018, 101 people were injured by gunfire in the same time period.
On Monday, neighbors recounted how a volley of gunshots interrupted what had been a calm and pleasant Sunday afternoon. Before the gunfire, a group of about 30 people were having a picnic in the park, eating hot dogs and hamburgers beside a basketball court.
It’s normal for the community to gather in that park, neighbors said. Kids fill the playground there in the evenings and groups often hold celebrations there. The neighborhood is full of families and while it’s not quiet, it’s rarely violent, residents said.
Ana Hernandez was in her home across the street from the park with her two young daughters when she heard at least 10 shots, followed by screaming. She went outside and saw two girls, maybe 10 and 5, crouched behind a car in front of her home, taking cover.
“They were crying,” she said. “They were shaking. They were very scared. I tried to comfort them as much as I could.”
She crouched beside them, and scooped one girl into her arms. She felt like they could be her own daughters. Hernandez saw a man lying in the street, a woman shot in the shoulder. Police officers carried another woman who appeared to have been shot in both legs, she said.
“Everything was chaos,” Hernandez said. The girls’ mother found them and collected them after a few minutes, Hernandez said.
“They are going to be traumatized from this,” she said of the girls. Her own daughters saw enough that they are too scared to play in the park now, she added.
“They were like, ‘We’re not going to the park anymore, right?’” she said.
Down the street, Sterling was relaxing on her porch when she heard the shots.
“At 4 o’clock on a Sunday, it couldn’t have come at a more unexpected time,” she said.
A man ran into her yard and onto her porch. Blood spurted from his right forearm. He’d wrapped some kind of rag around the wound. She called 911 for him as his blood stained her porch. On Monday, Denver firefighters stopped by Sterling’s house and sprayed away the blood with a firehose.
Sunday’s shooting is the fourth mass shooting in the city so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. All four have taken place since June. The archive defines a mass shooting as any incident where four or more people are injured or killed in gunfire, not including the shooter. Denver had not had more than three mass shootings in any year since the archive started collecting data in 2014.
Police leaders and crime experts continue to explore what’s causing the rise in violence in Denver and in many other cities across the country. It’s unclear how protests of police, the pandemic and the economic recession contribute to the bloodshed.
But it is clear that children who are shot, who witness a shooting or who repeatedly hear gunfire in their neighborhoods can all bear lifelong consequences of the trauma, said Apryl Alexander, an associate professor at the University of Colorado’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology.
The trauma can manifest in many ways: depression, anxiety or substance use. Even children as young as the 3-year-old girl shot on Sunday can show signs such as wetting the bed even after being potty trained or regressing to infant-like behaviors, Alexander said.
“That ruptures our youths’ sense of safety,” Alexander said.
For older teens, feeling unsafe can lead them to arming themselves, which increases the risk of more violence, she said. In 2018 and 2019, youths made up more than a quarter of shooting victims in the city.
“This is not something that’s an easy fix,” said Dr. Katherine Bakes, founder of the violence intervention program based at Denver Health. “Especially for the kids, those are core memories who shape who they are.”
Last year, the youngest victim to survive a gunshot was a 6-year-old boy who was playing at his grandma’s house when a drive-by shooter fired a bullet into the home.
