The Aurora Police Department (APD) shot and killed a man thought to be wielding an AR-15 rifle last week. The gun was actually a tactical air rifle.

“Our thoughts and our hopes and our ideas are with the affected in this tragedy, and I mean all of them,” new APD Chief Todd Chamberlain said during a press conference Monday. “I mean the suspect involved, the officers involved, the family members involved and also the community that unfortunately had to witness this event.”

Officers initially responded to a report of a fight between two men in the 11900 block of East 16th Avenue outside of a long-term housing facility for children with cancer around 2 p.m. on Oct. 3. Multiple other calls reported that one of the men was armed with an assault-style rifle, Chamberlain said during the press conference.

The suspect had been fighting with the man for around five minutes and attempted to take his car keys, according to Chamberlain. The suspect then allegedly picked up a rock and hit the victim in the head.

The suspect then got the airsoft rifle from a van and approached a woman pushing a cart, allegedly telling her that he was going to kill her.

Officers arrived at the scene and saw the suspect in a black sweatshirt with the rifle, walking around the parking lot of a nearby apartment complex. He was waving the rifle in a “very hostile and threatening manner,” Chamberlain said.

The officers commanded the man to drop the weapon, but he allegedly didn’t comply.

“The suspect’s response to this de-escalation and this verbal command was to raise the weapon toward the officers,” Chamberlain said.

The officers then fired two rounds, hitting the suspect and dropping him to the ground. He later died at a nearby hospital.

The gun, thought to be an AR-15 at the time of the shooting, was a black airsoft rifle in the shape of an AR-15, according to police photos. The tactical air rifle did have a bright blue clip — a legal requirement that imitation or toy firearms are required to have, according to guidelines.

Chamberlain noted that the officers had to react with a split-second decision and could only work with the information they had at the time — that being the report that the man did have an actual rifle.

“Had this been an individual who had put himself in a different position. Had this been an individual who immediately dropped the weapon and put up his hands, or an individual who kept the weapon down at a low-ready position, but that’s not what the officers responded to,” Chamberlain said.

Police do not believe that the suspect knew the victim he was fighting in the parking lot, according to initial investigations.

The department has not released the identity of the suspect.

A woman named Anna Harris told The Denver Gazette’s news partner, 9News, that she was the man’s girlfriend and identified him as 38-year-old Kory Dillard. She said Dillard was an army veteran who served in Afghanistan as a combat engineer.

“He was a soldier first, and it really affected his mental health,” Harris said.

She said her and Dillard lived together, and he often suffered from PTSD.

“By law, there has to be an indicator to prove that it’s a toy so situations like this do not happen. Soon as you look at the weapon, boom. Bright blue clip, not real. The situation should have been de-escalated,” Harris said.

The shooting came over a year after Aurora police shot and killed 14-year-old Jor’Dell Richardson after he allegedly held a pellet gun that was replicating a 9mm handgun on June 1, 2023.

Richardson and four other teen suspects were spotted possibly casing businesses in an Aurora shopping center at 8th and Dayton.

The five teens, who were wearing hospital masks and hoodies, entered a store and committed an armed robbery. Police didn’t know about the robbery when they gave chase.

Richardson was tackled by Ofc. Roch Gruszeczka. The officer then saw the pellet gun, demanding that he let go of it. He threatened to shoot Richardson and eventually fired at his abdomen. 

Shortly before the shot was fired, Jor’Dell can be heard on the body camera video saying: “Stop please, you got me.”

The 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office ruled the use of force justified and did not file charges against the officer.

When asked what can be done to cut down on these officer-involved shootings in Aurora, Chamberlain pointed toward the suspects themselves. 

“There is no Aurora police officer that wants to get involved in a deadly force, life-taking situation,” Chamberlain said. “Those actions are not predicated based upon the actions of the officers as much as they are the actions of the individuals that they confront.”

Regarding the specific shooting on Oct. 3, Chamberlain said that it was on the suspect and his decisions. 

“I think he knew why he was there with this weapon. He was there to intimidate, to terrorize and to threaten that community,” he said. “He had already committed a violent crime of robbery.”

The 17th Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) is investigating the shooting.

Two Aurora Police officers who fired their weapons are on administrative leave, per protocol, as the CIRT investigates their involvement.

9News contributed to this report