 I apologize for the delay. We had some technical difficulties on a picture that we were producing that we'll be providing you a little bit later. I'm Sergeant Chris Almser, the supervisor of the Aurora Police Department Media Relations Unit. Today we're going to give you a briefing on the incident that occurred yesterday. Speaking first will be Sergeant Steve Jokers. His last name is spelled J-O-K-E-R-S-T. He is the supervisor of our major crimes homicide unit. He will discuss the homicide that occurred at 142 Del Mar Circle. Then after that, Lieutenant Matt Clark, spelled C-L-A-R-K with the Denver Police Department Major Crimes Division, will give you a quick briefing on the officer involved shooting investigation that occurred at 14572 East 46th Avenue. And then finally, Chief of Police Nicholas Metz, M-E-T-Z, of the Aurora Police Department will give you an update on our officers who has shot condition. Sergeant Jokers. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Once again, Sergeant Steve Jokers, S-T-E-V-E, last name Jokers, J-O-K-E-R-S-T. And I am currently with the Aurora Police Department Major Crime Homicide Unit. On November 8th, 2016, at approximately 11 21 a.m. in the morning, the Aurora Public Safety Communications Department received a 911 call for service involving weapons with an injured party at the location at 142 North Del Mar Circle. Initial responding officers located in an injured male suffering from apparent gunshot wounds in the parking lot on the west side of 142 North Del Mar Circle. Officers immediately began to render aid and summoned for emergency medical assistance. Members of the Aurora Fire Department arrived on scene and transported the injured male to the University of Colorado Hospital where the victim succumbed to his injuries. During the initial investigation, officers located several eyewitnesses who provided detailed information of the suspect vehicle, license plate, driver and direction to travel from the scene. This information was provided to other responding officers, which include the members of specific Aurora Police Department Specialized Units, as well as the Denver Police Department who were able to locate that involved vehicle at an address in northeast Denver. Before I turn this over to Lieutenant Clark, I would like to remind you that this is currently on our portion an active investigation and we won't be providing the identity of the victim or any other information pertaining to our case at 142 North Del Mar Circle. Lieutenant. Good morning Lieutenant, Matt Clark with the Denver Police Department's Major Crimes Division. I'll give you some information about the incident that we had, that was the back end of the homicide, it was the second half. It occurred at 14572 East 46th Avenue which is in the Montbello area near the area of 46th Avenue and Durham Court. The Denver Police Department received an initial notification about the Aurora homicide with the suspect information at about 1131. That information included specific details about the armed and dangerous suspect who had just committed the homicide in Aurora and a specific vehicle by make model and license plate. The license plate listed to an address in Montbello on East 46th Avenue which directed District 5 officers to that location. Upon their arrival they located that same vehicle. It's a black Chevy Monte Carlo Tudor in the driveway there. It was unoccupied and there was no other individuals outside of the residence at that point. Simultaneously Aurora investigators, officers began arriving in the area and there was coordination between the two agencies while they were waiting for additional tactical resources to assist in attempting to contact the subject at that location there. Over the next several minutes as the coordination occurred, officers were prepared for an individual to come out of the residence and to contact him and that in fact did happen. The subject emerged from the residence. He was carrying a infant, we believe to be his child in a carrier. He loaded the carrier into the vehicle. There was specific concern of the officers at that point. If that vehicle became mobile knowing that he just committed a homicide 30 minutes prior in his propensity for violence and likelihood of being armed. The decision was made to attempt to contact him at that location prior to him getting into the vehicle. So the infant was placed in the vehicle. He was standing outside of the vehicle as an Aurora tactical team of four officers came up the street. They were in an unmarked car but the subject did identify them and recognize them to be officers rather than attempting to flee. He instead retrieved a handgun and began firing upon the officers. The officers were concerned and aware of the infant in the vehicle and they directed their specific direction of fire. The Aurora officers was directly at the subject and not towards or in the line towards where the infant was in the vehicle. The subject was struck by the rounds that were fired and he went down and was pronounced deceased at that location in front of the residence there. During the exchange of gunfire, one of the rounds that was fired by the subject did strike an Aurora police officer who was the driver of the tactical vehicle that was approaching. That officer was extracted from the car by Denver and Aurora officers and he was subsequently immediately transported in the Denver police vehicle to University Hospital. That was by a Denver police supervisor and an Aurora police officer in that vehicle and they rushed him to university for immediate treatment. Just so you're aware, I can give you a brief background. The subject was deceased. He'll be identified by the Denver Medical Examiner's office. He has a limited criminal history. He has some arrests for assault and a robbery but it's not a lengthy criminal history as far as that's concerned. We did recover a gun at the scene by the suspect. We also recovered several shell casings, further indication that he did fire upon the officers with multiple shell casings. Three police officers discharged their weapons in this incident. Two from Aurora and one from Denver. I won't go into the details of the officers or their identities but I can tell you that the Aurora supervisor with the tactical team came on the Aurora Police Department in 2003. A tactical officer from Aurora who was involved came on in 2001 and the Denver police officer who was involved as a District 5 patrol officer who came on the police department in 2013. Through this investigation we were cooperatively with the Aurora Police Department Major Crimes Unit as part of our investigative protocol for officer involved shootings. We interviewed a number of witnesses, all the officers that were available gave statements. We still have yet to interview the injured officer and we will do so when he's ready to provide an interview. You can imagine the call of an officer being shot gets a lot of attention from other officers. I would like to take an opportunity to thank the surrounding jurisdictions that came into Denver. We had Arapaho County, Adams County, Commerce City, Aurora and Denver police officers all responded immediately to help contain this chaotic scene and it was appreciated. At this point, if you have any additional information, if there's anybody that witnessed either of these incidents, either the Aurora homicide or the Denver incident involving the police shooting, we'd ask you to contact the respective agency or crime stoppers with that information and pass that along. In conclusion, again, thanks for the other agencies and our thoughts and prayers with the Aurora Police and the officer and his family as he works towards his recovery. I'll address any questions after Chief Metz speaks. Thank you. Good morning and thank you all for being here. Since October 1st of 2016, this has not been a good month and a half for law enforcement around our country. In fact, nationwide, since October 1st, our country has lost 14 police officers to gunfire. And I'm here to tell you today that we feel incredibly blessed that I'm not sitting up here giving you that kind of message. On the other hand, there were a couple of comments I heard yesterday following the incident when, in fact, one of them was on a radio show where they said, yeah, an officer had been shot. Oh, then now it's non-life-threatening injuries and the shooting must have not been that bad. I want to tell you that we came very close to losing a brother here at Aurora Police Department. With the officer's permission, I want to show you a picture of the entrance wound to our officer. As you can see here, it's just right around, right up by his nose. Had that round either taken a different type of trajectory or been a half inch to an inch higher, I'm not sure what kind of message we would have been giving you today. So we feel very blessed that he is going to survive and we feel very blessed that we're not playing in a funeral. This officer has an incredible reputation on our department. He was hired in 2003. He's been assigned to a variety of units besides patrol. He was assigned to the District 3 dark team in 2008. He was recently assigned to our SRT team, which is essentially our SWAT team. He received a Distinguished Service Cross in 2011 and he received that for responding to an active shooter incident in an apartment complex and rescuing a shooting victim. And he received the Meritorious Service Ribbon in 2015 in which a suicidal subject was threatening officers with a rifle and he was able to end that without further injury to anybody else. The two officers, at least from the Aurora Police Department that were involved, both of them are from our SRT. One is a sergeant. She's a female sergeant. She's been on the department since 2003. Also a supervisor within our SRT. The other is an officer who's a male since 2001. He's a lateral from another agency and also a member of the SRT. These officers as well as the officer from Denver reacted, in my opinion, courageously and heroically. And had they not reacted the way they did, they may not have been able to prevent our officer from getting further injury. I also think it's really important that we thank the Denver Police Department, the two officers that were there from Denver PD immediately put our officer in their car and rushed him to and shoots. It just shows that the relationship between the Aurora Police Department and the Denver Police Department is a very strong and solid one. And we work with Denver on a lot of different types of issues. But this is just a, to me, a prime example of how our departments come together when crisis hits and do an excellent job of taking care of each other. Following the incident our officer was, as I said, rushed to university and shoots. The, one of the first things we deployed was a new unit that we call our trauma response team. This is a group of officers who are specially trained to respond to situations where one of our own or even if it's another officer from another agency who has been seriously injured. We come in, we work with the hospital staff to make sure that not only is the officer taken care of, but also to ensure that the basic operations of the hospital are able to continue. They came in, they did a great job, they were able to arrange for the family to be brought in. We've been working incredibly close with the family, also working with the family to bring in extended family from out of state. So that is working out very well. I want to give a special shout out to my officers from Aurora. Those who not only were at the initial homicide scene, who were handling things the way they need to be handled, but also those officers who either were already on scene at 46 in Montbello or the officers who immediately responded. I went up to that scene not long after the help the officer came out and I can tell you from my own observations the collaboration between the Aurora police officers and the Denver officers in making sure that that scene was as secure as possible because it was still very fluid was amazing to watch and I couldn't be more proud of my officers and the officers from the Denver Police Department. I also want to thank the Anschutz Medical Center. Their staff, doctors were absolutely on it. They were providing whatever assistance our officer or our family or other officers needed and they really went out of their way to make sure that our police family was well taken care of. So with that, we'll open up to questions. Can you point to status and a baby today? Can you tell us a little bit? I'm going to see if someone else can maybe answer that. Yeah, the baby was okay. It was checked out. It's perfectly fine. It's been released. It's with another family member at this point. Just to clarify, the suspect was in the house with his baby. Yes ma'am. The officers called him to come out or did you just happen to come out? He came out on his own. So they were prepared to deal with him if he did come out and that's in fact what happened. They made no attempts prior to bringing him out of the residence. Places the baby in the car. Yes ma'am. He's outside the car, sees the cops. That's when he pulls his firearm and starts shooting or just running and shooting. He does not run at any point. He maintains his ground there and instead engages the officers. Had the officers ever gotten out of the car? No. The two Aurora officers had not. The Denver officer was out of his vehicle. Not at this time. How close was that shot roughly? We're still working to determine that. How many shots were fired? We have three officers fired multiple shots each from their weapons and similarly the suspect fired multiple shots from his. We're still executing search warrants on his vehicle and doing some crime scene work to make sure we get the accurate count. Detective, can you tell more specifically if you can, when you say that multiple shots were fired but the baking was not on the line of fire, I think it's difficult for us to understand how gunfire is going on and yet the baby is somewhere on the scene and yet the baby is not in danger. Sure, so they knew the baby, my understanding the Aurora officers knew the infant had been placed into the vehicle and then he was outside of the passenger side of the vehicle a couple feet west of it and so they were directing their direction of fire was specifically at him and they were cognizant knowing that if they were off-line with their fire that it could potentially go into that vehicle. So in doing so they made sure that the direction of their fire was always at him. How does that element of an infant being there change the reaction and how do the officers become trained on that kind of thing? It just seems like it elevates that. It definitely does, it was definitely a concern, they were cognizant of that and the risk that the child was in potentially being with this individual and by their response so they were aware of it and did the best to mitigate the situation. Was there any? The subject forced a confrontation with the officers, he fired upon the officers as they were in the area, they did everything they could tactically to contain him and he was definitely an absolute threat to the community. Do you know this at this point because I know it's early on, but do you know that when he fired first is that the point that he hit the award resumption? I don't think we'll be able to ever sequence which round hit the officer. Do you have any information, sir, if the baby was with the suspect at the time of the shooting in Aurora? I do not know that. Do we know what motivated that as well? I mean, I certainly heard things from people who were opposed to the family. Do we know why he went over to this department and targeted this person? Just like I stated earlier, we're actually in the process of still interviewing witnesses and gathering information from that particular scene and at this particular point we're still trying to develop that to include the information regarding the baby there. We do not know that right now. Did the victim and the suspect know each other? Did he have a gun in his hand when he came out? Did he have the baby in a carrier strapped to his chest? No, sir, we believe he retrieved it from his waist area. From the car? No, from his waistband, but I don't have any information. He got it from the vehicle. Joe, what's the, does the officer, your officer, who's on his ear rank? He's an officer, yes. Could you hold that picture on the front of the body and we'll just grab a clip for a second? Sure. And we're going to provide everyone with a copy. And we'll also send an electronic version to your desk. Great, thanks. Chief, it's not often that when we hear in the public that someone was shot in the face that we get to see the look like. Can you talk about why you are showing that and how come there's no entrance or can you explain how come there's no exit wound or where it goes, what goes on there? Yeah, well as far as why there's no exit wound, I'm not a physician so I'm, and so I'm not going to be able, not able to really give you an answer to that. I can say that the round was lodged internal inside him still, so the round did penetrate. As far as why I'm showing the picture, I think right now it's important for the public to know the kinds of dangers our officers are facing, and in particular for this situation. I think it's incredibly important to know just how close and how serious this situation was for this officer that, again, this was not something that was, oh, he got shot and he's fine and okay, must have not been that serious. Again, I feel that it was a miracle, if not a blessing, that he's still with us. So the officer actually, when he started firing, the three Aurora officers were still in the car, is that right? I'm going to have to ask the lieutenant. That's correct, the Aurora officers were in their vehicle approaching the residents when they were fired upon and they returned fire from their vehicle. That's what the evidence is showing. But the Denver officer was already there and was visible outside of his car? That's maybe what motivated this for the suspect? That's possible, so I'm not sure what triggered the suspect, recognizing it was the officers obviously. But yes, the Denver officer was out of his vehicle, he was a uniformed officer. Was he walking up to the house in the car? No, he had a stationary position that he took there. Okay, any other questions? One more question? I know you've addressed this, the fact that a Denver police officer put your officer in the car and took him to the hospital, and you're grateful. Is that something that you guys talked about? Is this the lessons of the Aurora movie theater? There's a different response. You don't wait, you just go. I can't say specific whether it's from the movie theater. Everyone knows that many of our officers made that type of decision that night, and because of that saved the lives of many. I think there was just a concern that how long was it going to take for emergency medical personnel to get there. I can tell you from my conversation with one of the doctors, he came out and said that those officers definitely made the right decision to load him up and get him to the hospital. He actually applauded that decision. And I'm sorry, we're not releasing the names of either the victim or the suspect in this? At this point, I don't believe so, but I'll let you answer. The investigation is ongoing and that's going to be actually through for our victim regarding our related incident on Delmar. That's going to come from Repo County Coroner's Office. Okay, so the suspect is the suspect? Similarly, the suspect is Denver Coroner's Office. Later this afternoon, I anticipate. Alright, thank you everyone. Thank you everyone. If you want to just stick around for a minute.