AURORA, Colo. — The evidence that tied a man to a shooting last May in Denver included surveillance video, an eyewitness identification, a few shell casings and a car registration, 9NEWS Investigates has learned.
A man down the street from where the shots were fired suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder. But investigators never found a gun, could not tie the man to the shell casings and didn’t have other forensic evidence, such as DNA or fingerprints.
Still, it was enough to persuade a Denver judge to sign an arrest warrant on a charge of attempted first-degree murder.
“What was needed was probable cause – and there is that, but not by much,” said attorney Scott Robinson, a 9NEWS legal analyst.
The man was 37-year-old Kilyn Lewis. Eighteen days after that warrant was signed, Denver and Aurora police officers tried to arrest him in an apartment house parking lot. After Lewis put his right arm behind his back, then brought his hand around with an object in it, an Aurora SWAT officer shot him. He died two days later.
The object in his hand was a cellphone. Lewis was not armed, and no weapons were found in the car.
On Friday, the Arapahoe County District Attorney's Office declined to charge the officer who shot Lewis.
After Lewis was killed, authorities released a heavily redacted arrest affidavit of the May shooting. Since then, 9NEWS Investigates has obtained surveillance video and other court documents that paint a fuller picture of what happened on May 5 outside a strip mall at 48th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard.
Surveillance video from outside a liquor store shows a red Monte Carlo backed into a parking spot and a black SUV sitting in front of it. It is not clear what kind of interaction occurred between the people in the two vehicles, but ultimately the black SUV – and two motorcyclists who appeared to be with it – pulled out of the parking lot to head west on 48th Avenue.
A short time later, the red Monte Carlo crossed the parking lot, heading south, before stopping. It appears someone in the car fired a gun out the passenger window down 48th Avenue in the direction that the black SUV and motorcycles had gone. A nearby pedestrian runs, and the video appears to show a bullet skip off the pavement, kicking up dust.
Police investigators found several shell casings at the scene.
Nearly an hour later, a man who had been along 48th Avenue west of the area reported that he had suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
> Below, watch the surveillance video of the shooting:
According to documents obtained by 9NEWS Investigates, a person who knows Lewis told police that he was driving the red Monte Carlo. A check of state records showed that Lewis was the registered owner of a red Monte Carlo, according to the documents.
“We have a victim,” said Robinson, the 9NEWS legal analyst. “We have a red Monte Carlo, which you can't really identify the license plate. But then you have people who are around that area who were able to eventually give an identification of the probable driver being Lewis. Then motor vehicle records connect Lewis to a red Monte Carlo, and that's good enough for most judges to issue a warrant.”
A Denver judge signed the arrest warrant two days after the shooting.
Robinson said it was his belief that if Lewis had gone to trial “he had a chance of winning the case, assuming there wasn't additional evidence.”
“The evidence sometimes gets better as the case gets closer to trial,” Robinson said. “The contrary is also true. Sometimes the evidence doesn't look as good when you actually get into a courtroom. … The prosecution certainly had a good chance of winning the case, but it was anything but a slam dunk.”
After Lewis’ death, police obtained a search warrant for the car. Testing founding gunshot residue inside – but the passage of weeks between the shooting and that search rendered that evidence of little value in providing Lewis was the one who fired those shots, Robinson said.