AURORA, Colo. — For a department that says it’s committed to being transparent, there are now even more questions about what the Aurora Police Department (APD) knew, and when they knew it, after officers killed a 14-year-old boy.
For more than a week, the department told the public that Jor’Dell Richardson was carrying a gun. Then they corrected the information to say Richardson was carrying a pellet gun.
Richardson was part of a group of people who robbed a convenience store in Aurora on June 1. Officers chased Richardson, tackled him, and fatally shot him.
The original press release on June 1 says Aurora officers killed a "suspect" who was “armed with a firearm.” We now know that, for nearly a week, Aurora Police Chief Art Acevedo was publicly telling people at meetings that Richardson had a semi-automatic weapon when he was shot and killed by police after robbing a convenience store.
Then the story changed completely.
The communications team at APD won’t answer our questions, but Acevedo will respond to our tweets on his personal account. He said he only found out that Richardson was carrying a pellet gun on June 8 before a press conference.
The Aurora Sentinel spoke with Acevedo Monday night after a city council meeting. He told them he’s trying to find out why he wasn’t told sooner and why it wasn’t booked into evidence as a pellet gun. He said to the Sentinel that it was a communications issue within the department and that the only reason he found out it was a pellet gun is because he asked.
From press conferences to community meetings, Acevedo publicly shared the same story for days of a weapon or firearm being found before quickly changing the story.
"Very quickly you hear one gun shot go off," said Acevedo at a community meeting on June 6. "Within almost a millisecond you see the weapon, the semi-automatic weapon that he had in his waistband go flying."
Three days later, and eight days after the shooting, he corrected the critical piece of information.
"And the firearm on the right is an HK USP pellet gun and I can tell you that yesterday I was able to confirm with my team that he was actually carrying the firearm on the right," Acevedo said at a press conference, pointing to a screen showing the pellet gun recovered.
The pellet gun looks virtually identical to a real gun. However, questions remain about why Aurora Police did not correct the inaccurate information sooner and continued telling the public that Richardson had a gun.
Why it took eight days to make that jump from a gun to a pellet gun is still a question Aurora Police will not answer.
A lawyer representing Richardson’s family tells us Acevedo is either quote “misleading the public or hiding behind his own incompetence.” Richardson’s family is now demanding an apology and that Acevedo resign as the Chief of the Aurora Police Department.
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