Three Denver police officers were justified in fatally shooting a man last year in the city’s Park Hill neighborhood, the Denver District Attorney’s Office announced Thursday.
District Attorney Beth McCann said the officers won’t face charges because 31-year-old Colton Wagner opened fire at an active construction site and Martin Luther King Jr. Park before pointing the gun at the officers.
“All the officers involved reasonably believed that Mr. Wagner was about to shoot in their direction,” McCann wrote in her decision. “It was reasonable for these officers to believe that they were facing an imminent and deadly threat.”
Prosecutors interviewed witnesses, the officers and looked at body camera footage.
Officers were called to Martin Luther King Jr. Park around 5:30 p.m. June 4, 2021, for reports of a man shooting a gun in the park.
Police found Wagner standing next to a gray Jeep and ordered him to drop his weapon.
Wagner held the gun to his head, then lowered it to his side and then pointed it at the officers. When he walked toward them and raised the weapon, the officers opened fire, according to the report.
The three officers fired their weapons a total of 15 times. No officers or bystanders were injured in the incident.
Wagner was taken to a hospital after being shot in the chest. He died later that night.
An autopsy found Wagner’s blood alcohol level was .165, more than twice the legal limit to drive. His cause of death was a gunshot wound to the chest.
According to the report, Wagner was a veteran who suffered from a mental illness that worsened in the weeks before the shooting.
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