THORNTON, Colo. — Ten miles away from Thornton as the crow flies, a trio of that city’s police officers quietly followed a car with no back plates into Lakewood in the early hours of the morning of April 30. The surveillance started in Thornton but stretched into Lakewood around 3 a.m. The three officers were in two unmarked cars.
The officers say someone in the car with no back plates fired a weapon at them around Alameda Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard. Neither of the police cars had their sirens on at the time, according to audio dispatch recordings reviewed by 9NEWS.
Minutes later, near the intersection of 2nd Avenue and Garrison Street, the two people traveling in the car being pursued were dead.
A press release was quick to point out one of the two was armed, but a review of body camera videos by 9NEWS Investigates shows the passenger in that car was not armed. Joby Vigil, 31, was shot in the head as he tried to jump out of the driver’s side of the car after a female driver jumped out right before him. The three officers appear to have fired multiple rounds at both people shortly after they tried a pit maneuver to bring the pursuit to an end.
Vigil’s parents have also seen the body camera videos and this week openly questioned why their son is dead.
“He was like an animal being hunted down,” his father Frank Vigil told 9NEWS Investigates reporter Chris Vanderveen. “That’s what it looked like to me.”
A lot remains unknown about what precisely happened that morning. Thornton Police have so far elected not to answer any questions about their officers’ involvement in a shooting so far away from their jurisdiction. The coroner has said the other person shot and killed was Jasmine Castro.
Vigil’s parents say their son had recently met Castro and was trying to help her with things like assisting her with her laundry. “He was trying to help her,” said Deanine Vigil, Joby’s mother. “He was so caring. He was always willing to put himself out there to help anybody no matter what walk of life they came from.”
Joby Vigil had recently been working at Haven of Hope in Denver, a nonprofit day shelter that works with the city’s unhoused population.
“This has changed our lives for sure. We’re never going to be the same,” Deanine Vigil said. “We need answers.”
The family has set up a variety of social media websites to bring more attention to their son’s case.
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