Nine people were shot and wounded near the Denver Nuggets’ Ball Arena early Tuesday morning in an apparent team-wide drug deal. first NBA championship were finishing, police said. One of the two men who were arrested in connection with the shooting also suffered a gunshot wound, police said.
At a press conference Tuesday morning, Denver Police Commander Matt Clark said nine men and one woman were shot during the incident. He said his injuries were not believed to be life-threatening.
Among the injured was suspect Ricardo Miquel Vázquez, 22, who was arrested on charges of possession of a weapon by a previous felon and possession of a controlled substance.
Clark noted that it was likely that some of the others who were injured were also possibly involved in the shooting.
“While we know that some of the offenders were injured by gunfire, we also know that several innocent bystanders were struck by gunfire,” Clark said.
Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas said investigators strongly suspect the five or six people injured were “completely innocent bystanders.”
At least 20 shots were fired in the area, police said, and five handguns and small bags of fentanyl pills were recovered.
“It certainly appears to have been a drug nexus,” Thomas said. “There was amounts of cash, there was a large quantity of drugs.”
Five people were treated at Denver Health Medical Center and were in fair condition, trauma surgeon Dr. Eric Campion.
“We were able to quickly triage these patients, identify which were the most seriously injured, and quickly get them to the operating room,” Campion said.
Raoul Gottfried Jones, 33, who was not injured in the shooting, was also arrested on a charge of possession of a weapon by a previous felon, Clark said.
AP Photo/David Zalubowski
According to police, the shooting happened near the arena where the Nuggets won their first NBA championship on Monday night with a hard-fought 94-89 victory over the Miami Heat in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
“What we couldn’t have planned for was a drug deal in the middle of an NBA championship celebration,” Thomas said.
CBS Colorado reported that thousands of fans had poured into the streets of the arena after the game. Police spokesman Doug Schepman told CBS News that the shooting happened about three and a half hours after the game, in the area where the crowd of fans had gathered, although there was a smaller when the shot went off.
– Patrick Torphy contributed to this report.
