AURORA, Colo. — Federal authorities are now investigating more than a dozen suspects following an armed home invasion and kidnapping at an apartment complex in Aurora that gained widespread national media attention over claims it had been “taken over” by a Venezuelan gang earlier this year.
The crime happened at the Edge of Lowry apartments in Aurora just before 8:45 p.m. Monday. Chief of Police Todd Chamberlain said two people – a man and a woman – were accosted by approximately 13 to 15 armed individuals before they were kidnapped and taken to a different unit within the same building.
There, Chamberlain said, the victims were “actually bound. They were pistol-whipped. They were beat. They were victimized. They were terrorized.”
The victims were not only kidnapped but their home was burglarized and taken over by some of the suspects in the group, Chamberlain added.
At around 1:50 a.m. Tuesday, the victims were able to talk the group into letting them go, Chamberlain said, adding police were notified about 30 minutes later once the victims were safe at a friend’s home in another part of the city.
Responding officers locked down the entire apartment complex and eventually found about 15 people who matched the description of the suspects after interviewing the victims. All 15 were subsequently detained for questioning.
Chamberlain, who described the events as a “terrible, terrible crime,” said he is using “any resource that I can to verify who these individuals are, who the suspects are, what their involvement is with this crime, and what their identities are.”
He said the Aurora Police Department had requested the help of the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) unit as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “to help identify who the suspects are and what actions they were involved in.”
The victims — who were only identified as Venezuelan immigrants during Tuesday’s news conference — were being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, including a stab wound sustained by the man during the encounter, he said.
“We are not going to rest until we verify every individual — who mistreated another human being the way these victims were treated — is in custody,” Chamberlain said, adding he believes the suspects are “most likely… undocumented or immigrants to the city of Aurora.”
While he could not yet say why the two victims were targeted, Chamberlain said that “individuals involved in this type of activity, they victimize their own race and their own ethnicity, and the reason they do that is because they know, because of their status, they will not come forward to police.”
Chamberlain then urged people who may not be living legally in the city of Aurora to call police if they are victims of a crime, as “there is no place in this country… in this city, where somebody should be victimized or mistreated based upon their documentation status.”
“I want to make sure that anybody, whether documented or undocumented, knows that they can call law enforcement, and we will respond, and we will serve them the best that we possibly can,” he said.
“We have a problematic location in the city of Aurora”
The Edge of Lowry apartments has been in the national spotlight this year because of a video that went viral showing armed men entering one of the units in the complex, sparking claims that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) had "taken over" the complex.
The surveillance video was recorded on Aug. 18, roughly 10 minutes before 25-year-old Oswaldo Jose Dabion Araujo was shot at the complex. He later died from his injuries.
In September, the Aurora Police Department deemed two apartment complexes — the Edge of Lowry and 200 Columbia — "criminal nuisances" and threatened closure over safety concerns that reportedly include "crime and deterioration."
The company that owns Edge of Lowry — CBZ Management —claims gang members prevented them from making repairs at their Aurora properties, saying it was too dangerous for their employees to be on site.
Code enforcement and inspection records dating back to 2020, however, show numerous violations prior to an influx of Venezuelan immigrants in the Denver metro, including mice infestations, ceiling damage, and dozens of unlawful vehicles parked in the parking lot.
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During Tuesday’s news conference, Chamberlain reassured the public that his department was working diligently to combat crime in and around the troubled complex.
“We have a problematic location in the city of Aurora, and it was without question these apartments that have been in the media’s attention and in the community’s attention for years, or at least a year,” Chamberlain said. “And again, we are not going to tolerate it. We are going to address it. We are going to continue to focus on it.”
Ultimately, the chief of police said, the problems that have occurred at the Edge of Lowry apartments in Aurora are the result of the federal government’s inability to address the nation's broken immigration system, which resulted in an influx of immigrants to the Denver metro in the winter of 2023.
“We have individuals that come to a country, get dropped off into a community, they have absolutely no infrastructure, they have absolutely no support, they have absolutely no guidance from the federal government about what to do, how to live, how to survive. And this is the ramifications of that activity. This is the ramifications of not monitoring what's occurring and how it's occurring and who is it occurring to,” Chamberlain said.
“High assumption” that the suspects may be connected to the Tren de Aragua gang
While Chamberlain said that what occurred Monday night at the Edge of Lowry apartments was “without question, a gang incident,” he could not yet say whether the notorious Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang was responsible for the crime.
“It is incredibly hard to identify specifically as TdA because there is no specific markers,” Chamberlain said, adding that “there is a high assumption that they may be affiliated or are affiliated with the TdA gang" because all of the people involved in this incident are from Venezuela. "But again, I’m not going to say 100% positively until that is validated and verified in that investigation.”
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Chamberlain said search warrants will continue, and police would continue bringing in “as many (people) as we have to” for questioning to determine who was involved in the kidnapping and home invasion at the Edge of Lowry apartments.
“If we go into that complex and we find contraband, if we find weapons, if we find evidence of crime, if we find individuals that have warrants, we are going to arrest them,” Chamberlain said.
What he will not do, he said, is “overenforce or overpolice… an entire community that is just trying to get along in a country that they have absolutely no idea about, no understanding about, and there is nobody from the federal government giving them any direction or any support on how to succeed, how to live, how to make it day by day.”
Gov. Polis calls for additional public safety investments, city officials cast blame on CBZ Management
State and local government officials were quick to provide statements of their own following Chamberlain's news conference Tuesday.
Gov. Jared Polis congratulated the city of Aurora and the Aurora Police Department and added the state added staff and resources to the task force investigating Tren de Aragua's ties to Aurora back in July after convening with federal officials over the summer.
He also called for "additional public safety investments during the upcoming legislative session to crack down on crime" and urged the legislature to approve those requests "to make Colorado safer.”
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman echoed "the strong words Chief Tamberlain expressed" during Tuesday's news conference, adding that "specific bad actors and problematic properties do not reflect on this city as a whole."
Meanwhile, Aurora city officials blamed CBZ Management for what occurred at the apartment complex in a statement of their own:
The incident at the ‘Edge at Lowry’ that Chief Chamberlain discussed in detail today underscores, with painful clarity, why the city has been aggressively leading criminal and civil legal actions against the private property owners, managers and/or "investors” of CBZ Management and their various LLCs. Their chosen absence and abject neglect of their own properties for years, and their pattern of ignoring and rejecting the city’s various offers to expedite a resolution in recent months, have, in part, created an environment that has allowed criminal activity to flourish time and again irrespective of who is committing the crimes.
Earlier this month, CBZ Management and the city of Aurora agreed to close the Edge of Lowry apartment complex for safety reasons and repairs.
Exact details — including when the 60-unit complex will be closed and what happens to the people living in its five buildings — remain unclear. City attorneys and the lawyer for the apartment owner will be in court again in mid-January.
Though the timeline is uncertain, the apartments’ closure is unlikely before mid-February at the earliest. Peter Schulte, Aurora’s city attorney, told our partners at The Denver Post after the hearing that residents would be given at least 30 days’ notice before the building is closed.
Officials said the city will place a lien on the properties to recoup any costs associated with a closure and any assistance provided to people staying at the properties. The property owners would then be required to pay those costs.
"No matter how anyone tries to spin it, the truth is the truth and the truth will come out," a CBZ Management spokesperson said in a statement obtained by Denver7 later Tuesday. "These gangs have been allowed to take over apartment buildings and terrorize innocent people. We hope the message is learned so this tragedy doesn't spread any further throughout the country."
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