Good Guy with a Gun #263: Denver, CO
He works in IT, but moonlights as a burglar? Whatever the case, he shouldn't have been in that apartment. | Original incident: July 21, 2024
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.
Five or six gunshots, a pause, then four or five more — nine to eleven rounds were fired, according to one neighbor’s count, on the sixth floor of a Denver high-rise a little before 1 AM on that Sunday morning.
Carter, who lived down the hall, didn’t stop to work out why. He grabbed his girlfriend and got behind the bed as a few rounds came through his own wall.
It started when a man who lived in the building got home with his partner, found a stranger already inside his apartment, and — startled — shot him.
By the time Carter worked up the nerve to check his peephole, the intruder was down in the hallway in a puddle of blood.
One Observatory Park sits across the street from the University of Denver, the kind of building a neighbor called “not cheap” and, with the school year not back yet, “fairly vacant right now.”
The Denver DA’s office said it couldn’t disprove a strong self-defense claim beyond a reasonable doubt, and the file closed without charges.
The man who died was Nelson Kimathi, a 27-year-old Kenyan. He was struck multiple times. He worked in IT, which strikes me as odd, but I’m sure I don’t have the whole story.
His family raised money back home to repatriate his body.
Carter said, “I’m glad my neighbor is OK. It’s sad when someone dies, but at least it wasn’t a random bystander. He very easily could have tried to break into my home.”
Sources
Local news
CBS News Colorado did a great job, with two named neighbors on record and the Colorado deadly-force statute cited. Denver man shoots and kills home intruder in University Park neighborhood, police say (CBS News Colorado)
FOX31/KDVR got the best on-scene account, from the neighbor Carter. Denver police: Home intruder shot dead by resident (KDVR)
9NEWS covered both ends of the story — the shooting itself, then the DA’s decision not to charge — though they were pretty terse.
Shooting at apartment near DU leaves intruder dead (Same-day report)
Prosecutors won’t charge resident who fatally shot intruder (No-charges follow-up)
Denver7 and the Denver Gazette both filed short same-day pieces that track the pack closely.
Denver police: Intruder shot, killed after resident returns home (Denver7)
Resident fatally shoots home intruder near University of Denver (Denver Gazette)
2A / specialist media
Sean Holt at USA Carry and Concealed Nation both covered the incident.
Resident Startled by Intruder After Returning Home at 1 AM, Fatally Shoots Suspect (USA Carry)
Resident Fatally Shoots Intruder After Coming Home At 1am (Concealed Nation)
Citizen Digital, out of Kenya, is the only outlet that followed up on Kimathi’s family and the fundraiser to bring him home. Family of Kenyan killed after being shot multiple times in Colorado seeks to raise funds for funeral expenses (Citizen Digital)
That last headline is a doozy. Appears to say that his family was killed all the way up to "seeks" . . . I often find headlines amusing. Takes a good writer not to mislead or make a hash of information. :)