The Aurora Police Department on Wednesday publicly identified nine members of a Venezuelan gang charged in 14 separate criminal incidents over the last 10 months, including at least seven events at the apartment complexes that a property management company has said were “taken over” by the gang.
The alleged crimes connected to the Tren de Aragua members include two shootings, several assaults, thefts and instances of threatening people with guns. The allegations also include intimate partner domestic violence and disputes between roommates.
Court records detailing the allegations show that gang members in some instances intimidated and attacked residents at the Edge at Lowry apartment complex at Dallas Street and 12th Avenue, at the now-shuttered Fitzsimons Place apartments at 1568 Nome St. and at the Whispering Pines Condominiums at 1357 Helena St.
The allegations do not include evidence of broad, organized, systemic gang-led extortion or control at the apartment complexes.
Aurora police named the Tren de Aragua members and detailed the charges against them after former President Donald Trump twice mentioned Aurora during Tuesday night’s nationally televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump falsely claimed that violent immigrants “are taking over the towns,” further fueling a false narrative that members of the Venezuelan gang have overrun Aurora, a city of 400,000 people.
That tale began earlier this summer when property management company CBZ Management claimed three of its properties in Aurora — Edge at Lowry, Fitzsimons Place and Whispering Pines — fell into disarray because of gang activity. City officials disputed that at the time, saying the properties had been cited for numerous longstanding code violations independent of gang activity.
But right-wing social media influencers, politicians and news outlets seized on that report — and on a viral video showing men with guns in one of the apartment complexes — and spun the company’s claim into the false story that an uncontrollable Venezuelan gang problem spanned the city.
Aurora city officials have consistently acknowledged the presence of Tren de Aragua, or TdA, members in Aurora but have said their numbers are few and they operate in isolated areas.
Those isolated areas included properties owned by CBZ Management, the gang members’ arrest records show. The company said in an Aug. 9 letter to Mayor Mike Coffman, Aurora interim police Chief Heather Morris and City Manager Jason Batchelor that apparent gang members were going door-to-door at the Whispering Pines property and attempting to collect rent from residents, among other allegations.
Aurora police spokesman Joe Moylan said Wednesday that police have investigated several claims of such extortion but have not found evidence strong enough to make arrests.
The arrests Aurora police have made of Tren de Aragua members reflect more isolated incidents, the records show.
Allegations of break-ins, theft and shootings
In May, a couple who lived at the Edge at Lowry apartments told Aurora police officers that a 23-year-old Tren de Aragua member broke into their apartment through a bedroom window while they were asleep and ordered them outside at gunpoint. When the couple unlocked their front door, five or six other men entered the apartment and the man who broke into their apartment told them something to the effect of “they run (expletive),” according to an affidavit.
The couple walked to their car, but the group of men followed them and threatened to kill them, so they abandoned the car and left the area before contacting police, according to the affidavit. The man who broke into their apartment was arrested and charged with burglary, kidnapping, menacing, robbery and car theft, records show.
That same man has been charged with crimes in five of the 14 incidents tied to the gang, according to Aurora police. He was charged with allegedly threatening his housemate with a knife in December, with stealing 51 pairs of sunglasses worth $17,850 from an Aurora store in May, threatening a woman in what officers believed was a domestic violence incident and committing theft in Boulder County. The court records for the Boulder incident were not available Wednesday.
The most serious incident at the CBZ Management properties over the 10-month span was a July 28 shooting at the Fitzsimons Place apartments — a building that has since been condemned, with residents evicted. Four Tren De Aragua members were arrested in connection with that shooting, which is described in court records as a shootout between multiple people across at least three floors of the building’s exterior walkways.
Two men were shot and a third broke his leg when he jumped from a fourth-floor window to escape the gunfire, court records show.
Tren de Aragua member Jhonardy Pacheco-Chirinos, 22, was charged with assault in that attack after police said surveillance video showed him “shooting recklessly” from the first floor toward the third floor of the building. His brother, Tren de Aragua member Jhonnarty Dejesus Pacheco-Chirinos, was charged with attempted murder in the shooting.
Jhonardy Pacheco-Chirinos was also arrested in a Nov. 12, 2023, assault at the apartment complex.
In that incident, witnesses told police that a group of men were drinking in a shared courtyard and that the group was “getting rough,” fighting each other and throwing bottles around 2 a.m. Eventually, the group focused on the victim of the attack — a complex resident who was nearby but not part of the group — and several people attacked him, at one point breaking a beer bottle over his head.
A witness told police the men claimed they “run this place,” court records show, and another witness told investigators the suspects were claiming they “owned” the property, according to an affidavit.
In a July 2 incident at Whispering Pines, a woman who worked as a cleaner at the complex told police a 28-year-old Tren de Aragua member tried to kick down a door to the building’s surveillance camera room and threatened her with a handgun when she tried to stop him. He was arrested and charged with menacing and attempted burglary.
Another Venezuelan gang member, Luis Miguel Calzadilla-Rojas, 32, was charged with attempted first-degree murder after police said he shot a man in the leg on Jan. 3 as the man walked away from Whispering Pines. The victim told police he’d slept in the hallway of the condominiums the night before, and believed he may have been targeted because he was a Black man in an area that had been marked through graffiti as territory of the MS-13 gang.
Other incidents tied to the gang did not happen at the three highlighted properties — two happened outside Aurora — and several involved personal disputes and domestic violence.
On April 2, a man who rented out rooms in his single-family home on Lima Street in Aurora confronted his renters over several months of missed rent payments. His renters, who included a 23-year-old Tren de Aragua member, attacked him, stabbed him, tied him up for several hours and threatened to kill him before eventually setting him loose, according to an affidavit.
“A small Tren de Aragua presence”
Investigations into the gang are ongoing, police said. The 10 identified Tren de Aragua members — one has not been charged with any crimes — represent a tiny fraction of Aurora’s overall gang population, and gang members in Aurora represent less than 1% of the city’s residents. A study of its gangs last year identified 36 separate gangs with 1,355 members.
Mayor Coffman and Councilmember Danielle Jurinksy said in a joint statement Wednesday that “criminal activity, including TdA issues, had significantly affected” the three properties, but still laid blame for the building’s poor living conditions on CBZ Management.
“We are concerned that there is a small Tren de Aragua (TdA) presence in Aurora and we have been taking it seriously. We have responded. We have made arrests. We will continue to make arrests,” the statement said. “We will continue to address the problems that the absentee, out-of-state owners of these properties have allowed to fester unchecked.”
Coffman and Jurinksy, who have both repeated allegations that the apartments had been taken over by gang members, called claims that the city had been overrun “simply not true.”
“…Issues experienced at a select few properties do not apply to the city as a whole or large portions of it,” their joint statement said. “TdA has not ‘taken over’ the city.”
___
© 2024 MediaNews Group, Inc
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
