2 men shot to death in Aurora

Holiday Inn guests locked in for hours

Julie Poppen, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 17, 2006 at midnight

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AURORA - Guests spent hours locked inside a Holiday Inn early Sunday after two men were shot to death shortly before midnight Saturday in the hotel's parking lot.

Aurora police responded to the shooting outside a Cambodian New Year's party at 11:35 p.m. Saturday, then sealed the premises until about 5 a.m. Sunday, leaving many people who had attended evening events at the hotel unable to leave.

Details of the double homicide were sketchy. People at the celebration - including family members of the deceased - were not cooperating with police, Aurora police Sgt. Rudy Herrera said.

The two men, both in their 20s, were shot in the upper body. One died at the scene and the other was pronounced dead at an area hospital. Both were believed to be of Southeast Asian descent.

"Our detectives truly are less than impressed with the degree of cooperation they're receiving from those who may prove to be key witnesses in this investigation," Herrera said. "Nobody really explained what happened. These people came into the hotel where the officers were, frantic, saying there's been a shooting outside."

Two off-duty Aurora police officers had worked security at the event, Herrera said.

When the officers responded to the shooting on the hotel's east side, they found a person giving one of the victims mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. They then saw the other victim nearby.

The chairman of last year's Cambodian New Year's party, Laieng Chhe, said police detained the partygoers nearly all night in the conference room they had rented.

Other hotel guests, who weren't part of the Cambodian New Year's event, said they had complained to hotel security about rowdy kids from the Cambodian function running and screaming in the hallways, climbing on fountains, yelling at a bartender and breaking a conference room door.

Fred Lewis, 50, of Houston, said young people from the party were fighting outside the hotel, at 15500 E. 40th Ave., in the minutes before the shooting.

"Some kids were throwing rocks," said Lewis, who was at the hotel for the annual coronation ceremony of the Imperial Court of the Rocky Mountain Empire, one of Colorado's oldest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered organizations. "They were all pushing and not getting along. I said, 'This is a mess fixin' to blow up.' " Lewis said he never saw security anywhere.

Herrera said the Aurora officers must not have been made aware of the problems if there were any.

Hotel managers declined comment on the shooting or its impact on their guests, but some guests said their Saturday night bills were being comped because of the disruption.

Police had no suspects in custody, but were looking for a late-1990s Ford F-150 pickup truck, dark in color with an extended cab.

Most of the people at the New Year celebration were Cambodian, but some were also Laotian, Herrera said. Herrera said police were investigating the possibility that the shooting was gang-related.

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