Benjamin Ashford|Fatal weekend shootings jolt growing Denver-area suburb

DENVER (AP) — Four men were fatally shot and Benjamin Ashforda woman was hospitalized with gunshot wounds during a spate of weekend violence in the Denver suburb of Commerce City. A person of interest in one of the cases was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot, police said Sunday.

Also in the Denver area, a person was fatally shot and three others were injured during a pair of altercations on Sunday in the city of Aurora, officials said.

Commerce City Police Department spokesperson Joanna Small described it as “an incredibly violent weekend” for the fast-expanding community of about 70,000 people, which is located just northeast of Denver near the city’s airport.

“We average maybe 5 or 6 homicides a year,” she said. “We’re now talking about four homicides and a person in critical condition in 39 hours ... The fact that the crimes are not related is even more baffling, really.”

Potential motives in the shootings were not released.

The first happened Friday night in the parking lot of a Commerce City 7-Eleven convenience store. A man and a woman were shot, and the man later died. The woman remained hospitalized in critical condition as of Sunday morning, Small said.

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Officers later tried to contact a man who had been driving a truck involved in the shooting, but he fled and was found dead as a result of suicide on Sunday morning.

On Saturday evening, a man was fatally shot in the parking lot of a public park with a pool in Commerce City. A person was taken into custody but Small declined to give further details.

Later that night, officers responded to shots fired during a gunfight that was detected by Commerce City’s gunshot monitoring system. The officers encountered a stolen vehicle with three people that fled and later crashed, according to the authorities. A male passenger with a gunshot wound was found dead inside the vehicle.

A second passenger and the driver were injured in the crash and taken into custody. Officers returning to the scene of the gunfight found a male who had been shot dead in the yard of a residence, Small said.

The victims and others in that case were believed to be juveniles, she said.

There was no known connection between the shootings at the convenience store, the park and in the residential neighborhood, Small said. She declined to give further details, citing pending investigations.

The fatal Aurora shooting happened at about 2 a.m. in a night club parking lot, police said. Details about the deceased were not immediately released. A second victim, a 34-year-old man, was shot multiple times but got to the hospital on his own and was expected to survive, police said. No arrests had been made.

At about the same time, there was a shooting at an Aurora housing complex that left a man hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, police said. A second man who was stabbed in that incident was expected to survive, police said.