16th Street Mall fatal shooting
Quote:
Originally Posted by Denver Post
A man was fatally shot Thursday just yards off Denver's popular 16th Street Mall, closing two blocks of Welton Street for two hours in the middle of a busy workday afternoon.
The unidentified man was pronounced dead at Denver Health Medical Center after suffering multiple gunshot wounds in a restaurant after an apparent altercation involving three or four people, police said.
Denver police spokeswoman Loretta Beauvais said the shooting occurred at 3:37 p.m. at Chopsticks & Sushi, a Japanese-Chinese restaurant at 1630 Welton St.
After Thursday's shooting, police closed Welton Street to traffic between 15th and 17th streets until about 5:45 p.m. Dozens of bystanders crowded against yellow police tape to survey the scene.
Attorneys Haley Wylie, 26, and Arianne Gronowski, 30, were leaving for a meeting from the Dominion Towers building — across the street from the restaurant — moments after the shooting.
"I could have been the one walking on that sidewalk (near the restaurant) when the shooting happened," Wylie said. "It's strange that it was happening right as we walked out."
Both she and Gronowski initially thought emergency personnel were responding to a fire until police began cordoning off the area with crime- scene tape.
"It makes me wonder what was going on in that restaurant," Gronowski said.
Investigators continued to work late into the evening, combing the floor and walls of the restaurant with flashlights as a crime photographer snapped flash photos.
"Out-of-town people are shaken up," said Alicia Harrison, 30, a hostess at the Appaloosa Grill, a few doors away.
"It's tragic, and people are more frightened."
Police originally issued an alert for a suspect, but police spokesman Sonny Jackson later said there was no manhunt, without providing further details. Investigators questioned witnesses, including a handful of restaurant employees.
Police said the victim was not a restaurant employee and declined to identify the dead man until the medical examiner's office positively identifies him and notifies the family.
Shootings near the mall are highly unusual, especially during daylight hours.
The most recent headline-making shooting happened on an afternoon in August 2007, when a clerk at a 7-Eleven store on the mall was shot in the head while people crowded the mall after a Colorado Rockies game. The clerk survived the shooting.
Anyone know any details? I better put my permit app in soon...
