Police say 4 suspects in July 28 Aurora apartment shooting have ties to TdA gang

AURORA | Amid intense controversy over undocumented allegations of widespread Venezuelan gang activity in a handful of shabby apartments in northwest Aurora, police said four shooting suspects in custody have concrete or possible gang ties.

The gang identification relates to four men who were arrested in July in connection with a shooting that was ruled an attempted murder.

Police were called to an apartment complex at 1568 Nome St. around 4:30 a.m. on July 28 after reports of gunfire.

“Upon arrival, they found two adult males suffering from gunshot wounds,” Aurora Police Department spokesperson Sydney Edwards said in a statement in July. “One of the males’ injuries are life-threatening and the other’s injuries are serious.”

Another man was found at the scene with a broken ankle.

The next day, Jhonnarty DeJesus Pacheco-Chirinos, 24, of Aurora, was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault, illegal discharge of a firearm and reckless endangerment.

“We can now confirm that he is a documented member of Tren de Aragua,” police said in a social media post on September 4. Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA, is a gang from Venezuela.

Nixon Jose Azuaje-Perez, 19, and Dixon J. Azuaje-Perez, 20, both of Aurora, are each charged with tampering with physical evidence. Both are also suspected TdA gang members, police said.

Jhonardy Pacheco-Chirino, 22, also known as “Cookie” or “Galleta” also of Aurora, was also arrested. Police previously said charges against Pacheco-Chirinos are pending.

“After working with our local, state and federal partners, we can now share these gang-related connections,” police said Wednesday night. “Both Jhonnarty and Jhonardy remain in ICE custody.”

For more than a week now, Fox News, conservative social media influencers and some local media have been heeding the call of some local city lawmakers to claim, without evidence, that Aurora has been overrun by Venezuelan gangsters brandishing long guns, extorting rent from tenants in cheap apartment complexes and terrorizing the city.

Meanwhile, the mostly Venezuelan migrants living in the apartments — the target of what local police and Colorado’s governor call exaggerations and outright lies — say the real danger comes not from gangs but from a landlord they describe as a “slumlord” who has let the complex fall into disrepair. Residents say they also see danger in the city of Aurora’s apparent lack of interest in holding the landlord and his management company accountable, and in city politicians who spread misinformation and threatened their homes.

“We are afraid of your mayor and the cockroaches and rats in our apartments, not gangs,” Gladis Tovav, a resident of the six-building complex The Edge at Lowry, said Tuesday through an interpreter.

About 50 tenants at the apartments at East 12th Avenue and Dallas Street in Northwest Aurora held a news conference Tuesday in response to Mayor Mike Coffman’s claim on Facebook Friday that the city was seeking an “emergency” court order to close and vacate the complex and an undisclosed number of other properties. Coffman posted that the Aurora city attorney’s office was preparing documents to seek an emergency order from the municipal court declaring the properties a “criminal nuisance.”

City officials said Tuesday that the city government has not, in fact, sought such an injunction. Councilwoman Alison Coombs went further, saying that “that kind of emergency order doesn’t even exist,” noting that it takes months or even years for a city to close an apartment complex.

That was the case at a 98-unit complex at 1568 Nome St., which was evicted and closed by the city on Aug. 13 after residents, many of whom were also Venezuelan citizens, complained for two years about building violations including leaks, mold, and insect and rodent infestations that the landlord had long failed to address.

That complex, called Aspen Grove, was the site of the shooting linked to the July 28 arrests.

It is owned and operated by the same interests that own and operate The Edge at Lowry. The landlord has alleged that some of its properties in Aurora have been overrun by members of Tren de Aragua.

Since the city closed Aspen Grove, several hundred families have been displaced.

Coffman and, to a greater extent, Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky have parroted to the landlord — falsely, according to Aurora police and city staff — that the complex was closed because of TdA gang activity, when in reality the reason was repeated building violations that residents had long complained about.

On Tuesday, a tenant at The Edge in Lowry showed news reporters traps with mice, both dead and alive, attached to them as evidence of the problems. He and other residents said there has been no Venezuelan gang activity that they know of in the complex, and that a much-publicized Aug. 18 video showing men with long guns and handguns surrounding an apartment door there involved outsiders who were not members of the Venezuelan community.

They said that, contrary to Jurinsky’s claims, none of them had been extorted by gang members. Several showed receipts of their rent payments to the landlord in response to the allegations.