The 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office found a Colorado State Patrol trooper justified in the deadly shooting of a man on Highway 36 in Westminster after the trooper was ambushed by a motorist.

Cpl. Tye Simcox, a CSP trooper, shot and killed Victor De Santiago, born in California but a long-term resident of Colorado, on Sept. 7 after De Santiago pulled his Chevy Silverado alongside Simcox’s parked vehicle and began firing shots at the trooper, according to a news release sent by the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

“Cpl. Simcox was ambushed that day by a murderous suspect whose intention was to assassinate a Colorado State Patrol Trooper,” 17th Judicial District Attorney Brian Mason said Thursday morning. “Cpl. Simcox responded with tremendous poise and unquestionable heroism in fighting off this attack and saving the lives of other people on Highway 36 that day.”

Simcox parked his official F-150 truck, marked clearly as a CSP patrol vehicle and equipped with emergency lights, in the toll both area catching up on paperwork and monitoring traffic. De Santiago pulled up along side Simcox’s vehicle and started firing. The trooper was hit in the arm, but managed to jump out of his vehicle and retrieve his rifle as De Santiago pulled his car over to the shoulder of the roadway, according to the release. Then, during a pause in the gunfire as De Santiago moved his hands to his waistband in an apparent attempt to reload, Simcox shot him until he was on the ground.

“I can’t imagine the terror that Cpl. Simcox must have felt when bullets started riddling through his patrol vehicle,” Mason said. “The fact that he was even able to compose himself, fire back, protect innocent lives and stop the threat in the face of a clear assassination attempt is just amazing to me, and I’m grateful for his service to our state and his heroism that day.”

After medical personnel arrived, De Santiago was pronounced dead on the scene, with a later autopsy determining the cause of his death to be the multiple gunshot wounds, according to the release. Simcox had a tourniquet applied to the gunshot wound on his right outer forearm and was transported to Denver Health for medical treatment.

After looking over the case, 17th Judicial District Attorney Brian Mason determined that De Santiago posed an immediate danger to Simcox and that the use of force was necessary to stop that danger.

Investigators at the scene found a 9 mm gun in De Santiago’s possession and an empty 10-round magazine in the center console of his vehicle, the release said. A total of 26 9 mm casings were found in his car and on the roadway, along with a box of ammunition in the vehicle with 27 more rounds.

Simcox’s vehicle had several bullet holes along the outside — including in the rear passenger door frame, front passenger door, front passenger window, passenger side mirror and the front windshield — as well as a shattered rear driver’s side window and a flat front passenger tire, according to the release.

“In all my years as a prosecutor and as the District Attorney for this jurisdiction, I have rarely seen a more harrowing incident than the one presented here,” Mason said in the release “The suspect ambushed a Colorado State Trooper and sought to assassinate him. Corporal Simcox’s actions were heroic by any measure — and his protection of the community that day is worthy of significant admiration and recognition.”