Man arrested in Denver-area shooting and taken to hospital along with female victim, police say

BROOMFIELD, Colo. -- A suspect in a shooting at an apartment complex near Denver was taken into custody Thursday and transported to a hospital along with a female victim after a four-hour standoff during which gunfire hit cars, other buildings and apartment units, police said.

After officers negotiated with the suspect for 3 1/2 hours, they forced their way into the apartment at the Arista Flats complex in Broomfield where he was holding a woman hostage and arrested him, said Rachel Haslett, a spokeswoman for the Broomfield police department.

Haslett said an officer fired his weapon inside the apartment, but she didn't say whether it struck anyone.

“He was threatening to hurt people,” said Haslett, who didn't release the suspect's name or age and didn't know what weapons he might have used.

The suspect and female victim were taken to a hospital, Haslett said. The nature of their injuries weren't immediately known.

Police responded to reports of gunfire at the apartment complex as people were getting ready for work in Broomfield is a mostly middle-class city of about 75,000 people roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) northwest of Denver.

Authorities sent out a phone alert warning residents to shelter in place or evacuate from the area.

Haslett said she didn't know how many shots were fired during the standoff.

“But I will tell you, they were fired sporadically throughout the process so we wouldn’t hear them for a while. And then another shot would be fired. So it wasn’t all at once,” she told reporters.

Heather Tallant said she was walking her dog outside her room when a bullet or projectile flew over her head and smashed into her bedroom window.

“I saw it hit my window, and that was me just gone,” said Tallant, who ran barefoot from the building past the police line after the shooting ended. “I got shot at,” she said, dropping to sit on the ground.

Nate Schamel, who lives across the street from the Arista Flats, told The Associated Press that he first heard sirens at around 6:45 a.m.

“I heard more and went outside onto my balcony. I saw a Broomfield Pd officer pull up across the street from me, get out with his rifle, cock it and start trotting down the street. I asked what was going on and he told me to go inside,” Schamel said in a text.

He said at 7:30, he called down to an officer who was next to his home and asked what was going on, and the officer told him and his wife to evacuate.

“This was after we had already heard multiple bursts of gunfire (from what sounded like multiple different weapons) and as we were leaving we heard 4-5 more bursts of gunfire,” he wrote.

Amy Johnson Kemner, who lives on the floor above the suspects unit, said she was lying in bed when she heard loud banging that sounded like nails being hammered into floorboards. Then she heard sirens.

“Then I heard really loud banging that didn’t sound like someone was nailing,” she said.

Kemner, 46, said that while going down the stairs, she was met with screams from a SWAT team telling her to barricade herself inside her apartment.

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This story was updated to correct the spelling of Rachel Haslett's name, which had been misspelled “Hazlett” in once instance.

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Hanson reported from Helena, Montana.