The 71-year-old scatters the walkway to her house on Denver’s Northside with the rich, orange petals of the cempasúchil — marigold — flowers. The blossoms, grown by Salazar, are synonymous with the traditional Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos as they are thought to be fragrant enough to attract the spirits of deceased loved ones to their family’s homes and altars.

On Thursday, Day of the Dead, Salazar’s family will pack the matriarch’s home and gather around a sacred altar overflowing with photos of the dead and ofrendas — offerings — made up of the departed’s favorite earthly delights. The day serves as a reunion between the living and the dead when the veil between realms is considered thinnest.

“It is really peaceful,” Salazar said. “I am happy to know that when you’re gone, there is a beyond, and that beyond is powerful. It is a nostalgic day to remember where you came from and who you came from.”

Lit candles guide the path to Salazar’s front door. Garlands of marigolds and papel picado — colorful, decorative paper cutouts — line Salazar’s porch, letting passersby in this realm and the next know that a celebration of life, death and remembrance is brewing inside.

Salazar — a storied artist and former director of Santa Fe Art District’s Latin American art museum Museo de las Americas —  helped popularize Day of the Dead in Denver during the burgeoning Chicano movement in the 1970s. Even though the celebration is more widely recognized today, Salazar still enjoys teaching new celebrants the ancient ways of Día de los Muertos — the rites and rituals her grandmother passed to her that she passed to her daughter who now teaches her granddaughter.

While Día de los Muertos iconography like sugar skulls can often be found alongside witch hats and fun-sized candy bars at the grocery store, Day of the Dead is not simply a Mexican version of Halloween, Salazar said. The holiday, a blend of Indigenous and Latino cultural traditions dating back thousands of years, focuses on honoring ancestry and commemorating death as a part of life by building altars that serve as shrines to memorialize lost loved ones.

“I want people to remember me when I am gone, so I remember those I have lost,” she said.

Loss is universal

The leaders of the Latino Cultural Arts Center know the value of passing traditions on to youth, which is why the center brought Día de los Muertos programming to three Denver schools this year.

The art classroom at Denver’s Valverde Elementary School hummed on Tuesday with an excitement only attainable by a group of children given craft supplies at 9:30 a.m. As the arts center’s Mandy Medrano and Valverde art teacher Kristina Barboza passed out light-up butterfly replicas, faux marigolds and miniature clay pan de muerto — a type of Mexican bread baked for Day of the Dead — the fourth-graders squealed with delight.

Barboza has been teaching Día de los Muertos for six years at Valverde, where a majority of the student body is Hispanic.

“It started off small,” Barboza said. “We’d put an altar together, but post-COVID, it turned into a bigger family celebration because of the needs of our community. Because there was so much loss. Our parents asked for this, and it’s brought our whole community together.”

The students make art to display at a big altar honoring the school community’s lost loved ones. With the help of Latino Cultural Arts Center funding, families will be welcomed on Thursday for food, drinks and mental health resources.

Melissa Roybal, a Denver Public Schools social worker and trauma-informed therapist, volunteers with the arts center to provide mental health services at its Day of the Dead programming.

“We’re trying to destigmatize talking about mental health in the Latino community,” Roybal said. “That’s why it’s so important to have practitioners who look like the communities they’re serving.”

Normalizing mental health can be as simple as word reframing, Roybal said. Instead of using words like “therapy,” Roybal tells people she’s there to help talk things out.

“Everyone has loss,” Medrano said. “It’s universal. I’m never afraid to talk to kids about loss. It’s better to not sugarcoat things and be real about it. It’s a part of who we are as a people.”

Yulissa Robles, 9, was happy to share as she glued pink ribbon to her altar, which she was making to honor her uncle and aunt who passed away.

“My favorite part has been making something that represents my family,” Yulissa said. “At home, we make our altar, too, because we like to represent our culture.”

“A beautiful tapestry”

On Thursday, Salazar prepped her altar-making supplies in her santos — saints — room, a striking part of her home with walls the color of butter and covered from top to bottom in artwork spanning various religions, from crosses to New Mexican saints to tapestries and her own woodwork.

She blessed the offerings before placing them on the altar, bathing them in incense from burning palo santo.

Her fingers brushed the frames and delicate edges of generations-old photographs awaiting their time on the altar. As the day gets closer and Salazar’s preparations head into overdrive, she said she begins dreaming of her deceased family members and knows they are close. She awaits their reunion at the altar with a soft smile.

“Life and death is with you constantly,” Salazar said. “If you ignore that, you only live but half your life.”

Renee Fajardo, coordinator of the Journey Through Our Heritage program at Metropolitan State University of Denver, described typical altar components as elements of the earth: fire in the form of candlelight, water and air represented by feathers or the paper cutouts. Altars often offer salt to protect the body from breaking down as it travels from the world of the dead to the world of the living, Fajardo said. The marigold flowers, pictures of the deceased and sugar skulls are key components, as well.

“It’s a beautiful tapestry — a weaving of people and communities and a particular area coming together to say, ‘This is the way we are going to love and honor our departed loved ones,’” Fajardo said. “It’s really about our humanity as a people that live on the same planet with each other, that we all have families we love and communities, and we all have departed loved ones.”

Family members also add personal touches to the altars reflecting the visitors’ personalities.

Salazar, for example, would like her family to leave her favorite molé at her altar when she dies.

Thanks to Colorado’s Latino and Chicano leaders throughout the years, Day of the Dead celebrations can be found throughout the state, from Westwood’s street festival to the parade along Santa Fe Drive to live dancing and music at the Longmont Museum.

Fajardo, a Denver native with Chicana and Native American roots, said when she thinks about Día de los Muertos, she imagines a future where the sacred remembrance of one’s ancestors lasts longer than the holiday.

“Once you have these pictures and stories of people and ancestors who built the community, we want to encourage people to begin a repository, a history telling,” Fajardo said. “We want it to be more than just looking at the parade and building of altars. How do we collect these stories and make sure the people who come after us recognize who we are in Colorado is a big, historic tradition of people weaving in and out of each other for hundreds of years.”

Fred is a 12-foot-tall Home Depot skeleton — and he’s a hot commodity. The metal-framed monsters can be spotted this time of year towering over Colorado neighborhoods, from cityscapes to rural farmland.

Halloween fiends lucky enough to get their hands on the coveted décor can consider themselves members of an exclusive club; Home Depot won’t say how many of the skeletons it has sold, but Tyler Pelfrey, brand communications manager for the home-improvement giant, confirmed the behemoth box of bones has sold out every year since its 2020 debut.

Calls to Home Depot stores in Glendale, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Fort Collins this week confirmed — occasionally with a harumph of incredulous laughter from a sales associate for even deigning to hope — that the 12-foot-tall skeleton was out of stock.

On Facebook Marketplace, price gougers across the metropolitan area were peddling the bipedal set of bones, which retails for $299, at prices between $350 and $599.

Has fame gone straight to the skeletons’ giant, plastic heads? Erin Moriarty-Siler doesn’t think so. Instead, Fred the Dead has brought residents of the Berkeley neighborhood in northwest Denver together, she said.

All Moriarty-Siler wanted for her and her husband’s eight-year anniversary this year was one of the 12-foot skeletons. The size and splendor were too much for a Halloween fanatic to pass up. The Denverite had been eyeing the big guy since he first went on sale three years ago, but the stars never aligned on securing one.

Moriarty-Siler thought her family missed the orthopedic opportunity again this year — until her husband came home with the huge box in the back of his car after striking a deal with a Facebook Marketplace reseller in Centennial.

The eighth anniversary is henceforth the bones anniversary in the Moriarty-Siler household.

“I immediately started sobbing,” said Moriarty-Siler, who happened to be wearing a skeleton shirt on the fateful day of Fred’s arrival. “It’s the best gift ever. It was kismet.”

Fred the Dead — Moriarty-Siler’s name for her bony buddy — was born that day with a crowd of awed neighbors assembled around the skeleton as it was erected into the sky, joining other holiday ornaments including more minuscule bony figurines, pumpkins and witch hats scattered around their yard.

Like many who manage to nab the giant skeleton, Moriarty-Siler plans to leave Fred up year-round, theming him in seasonally appropriate ways with Santa hats, Valentine hearts and the like.

“I’ll reach out and high-five him”

Loveland’s Kerri Sewolt is another skeleton year-rounder — mostly because Sewolt doesn’t know how else to store the heavyweight Halloween decoration.

“I don’t have an HOA, and I’m known as the Halloween Lady in my neighborhood anyway, so it’s fitting,” she said.

Sewolt has been the proud owner of a giant Home Depot skeleton since 2021 after being beguiled by its stature the first time she laid eyes on one a year prior.

Last summer, Sewolt received a complaint from a neighbor who was trying to sell their home, she said, and asked Sewolt to take the skeleton down.

“My snarky neighbor moved away and, luckily, the people who bought her house love my year-round décor enough that they thought it was a sign to buy the house,” Sewolt said. “I love my skeleton. He makes me so happy. I’ll reach out to high-five him as I’m walking into the house and tell him, ‘Hey, stay sexy.’”

Sewolt had seen other giant skeleton displays where homeowners had dressed their Halloween centerpieces like oversized dolls. Determined, she purchased a 4XL-sized Hawaiian shirt and pantsuit for the summer months, but “failed miserably” when it came to figuring out how to get the fabric over the massive prop.

Nevertheless, Sewolt credits her skeleton for inspiring others in the neighborhood to go hard on their Halloween décor. Fellow giant skeletons have appeared in her ‘hood, much to Sewolt’s delight.

“I don’t think it’s a competition,” Sewolt said. “I think of it more as, like, a skeleton community, if you will.”

“No good place to store him”

Grand Junction’s Deb Kennard also believes it takes a village to raise a skeleton.

Someone in Kennard’s community — Kennard may or may not be privy as to who — purchased a hulking skeleton and has been moving the thing around the neighborhood at night to surprise the kids.

The skeleton in Kennard’s neighborhood — named Bob the Bones by the local children — is a cousin of the Home Depot variety; it’s 10 feet tall and hails from Walmart, where it was actually in stock as opposed to its taller Home Depot counterpart.

The network of neighbors toting Bob from yard to yard is tight-lipped to preserve the sanctity of the myth of the mobile skeleton, but Bob’s lore is growing taller than his frame.

One family somehow hauled Bob onto the roof and arranged him to appear like he was headed down the chimney. Another home gave Bob the garden hose to test out his green thumb. Another family popped a second skeleton on Bob’s shoulders.

“I don’t even know whose house he’s at now, and that’s great,” Kennard said. “It’s turned into a good thing. There’s no good place to store him, so he can just stay out forever.”

An audience of family, friends and plainclothes clowns squinting to recognize each other without white-painted faces cheered on as the five men, women and teens each leveled up from layperson to professional goofball.

It was graduation day for the 2023 cohort of Colorado Clown Alley’s 10-week clown school. The newly-inducted jesters are now not only card-carrying members of a different variety of postsecondary institution, but rising masters of belly laughs, balloon animals and spreading joy in uncertain times.

The clown class of 2023 tickled Clown Alley president Isabel Nuanez as there were multiple young members, she said, inspiring hope for a rebound in the clown industry.

Whether people were compensating for the bleakness of the pandemic years or searching for a bit of childhood nostalgia, Nuanez said clowning is back — and the next generation of jokers has some big shoes to fill.

Turn that frown upside-down

Emily Cooper, 30, had a rough start to the day.

On graduation morning, she discovered her Denver garage had been broken into and her e-bike stolen. She felt discouraged — a feeling she knows has resonated with many in recent years.

“Things have been kind of bleak, so I just really wanted a way to uplift my loved ones in the community,” Cooper said of her decision to embrace clowning.

Tensions eased Sunday morning once Cooper started applying her white face makeup and her alter ego, Lollygag the Clown, appeared. Once Cooper glued on her rainbow eyelashes and red nose, she couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. (To be fair, it was painted on.)

Cooper’s mother, Becky, and brother, Chris, had flown in from Minnesota for the big day and watched with pride as Lollygag emerged before them at her dining room table.

Makeup applied. Red suspenders on. Blue shirt with clouds and rainbows buttoned. Blue hat donned.

Lollygag had arrived.

“This is really par for the course for Emily,” said Chris Cooper as he eyed the plastic bats, ghost-shaped string lights and moon phases decorating his sister’s home on a March morning closer to Easter than Halloween. “It makes me happy that she’s doing this because she’s such an empathetic person, and I think making people smile is healthy for her emotional state.”

When Emily Cooper decided to enroll in clown school this year, she was in need of a smile.

The insurance agent was laid off unexpectedly in January. Instead of foundering, Cooper wanted to have a little fun and refocus on her former passion for theater and entertainment, which she participated in during high school but hadn’t nurtured since then.

“I went from having conversations with people every single day where they would be crying on the phone about how they need this insurance but can’t afford it to getting to learn about how to make people laugh and smile and feel entertained or distracted from whatever stress or sadness they might be experiencing in their lives,” Cooper said. “That’s been huge for me.”

Cooper scoured the internet for clown schools and discovered Colorado Clown Alley, which has been teaching the fundamentals of clowning since 1970.

Most of all, Emily Cooper said clown school taught her how to develop her character, Lollygag, which she named by Googling the silliest words in the English language.

“This was really a blessing in disguise,” she said. “My friends think I’m making a joke when I say I have to get up for clown class tomorrow and I’m like, ‘No, really, I have clown class tomorrow.’ It’s been funny, and I’ve had so much support.”

Choosing laughter

Aside from her blue hair and a comically tiny hat, Nuanez — clown alias: DaffaDilly — blended into the graduation audience Sunday.

Nuanez filmed the skits the graduating class performed — charmingly corny sketches with physical comedy, props and wordplay — and laughed among the hardest in the crowd, hyping up her proteges on stage.

Nuanez, 67 years young, is the president of Clown Alley’s board of directors, making her the head jokester in charge. DaffaDilly has been clowning around for 15 years since Nuanez’s retirement from her state computer job and matriculation in Colorado Clown Alley.

At clown school, budding bozos learn how to apply makeup without looking scary, how to paint faces, how to perform skits and how to spot and stay clear of coulrophobes — people who fear clowns — among other talents, Nuanez said.

In addition to the annual clown school, Clown Alley hosts monthly meetings at which local clowns congregate to swap ideas and teach talents.

Each year, clown school alums pack the graduation sans costumes to show their support for the new class without stealing their thunder.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez, 71, introduced herself to the graduation audience as Nurse Patch-It, figuring she wouldn’t be recognized outside of her clown persona.

Kaare-Lopez graduated from Clown Alley in 2000. It was anger that led her to the school, she said.

“I was a cancer survivor, and I was very angry that I couldn’t have kids,” Kaare-Lopez said. “I thought, ‘What can I do with all this anger?’”

Kaare-Lopez chose laughter.

For more than a decade, Nurse Patch-It has cheered up patients at Swedish Medical Center. Her husband, Bernie Lopez, is also a clown by the name of Dimples.

Before the graduation ceremony began, Nurse Patch-It embraced Woopsie the Clown, who was going incognito as 69-year-old Nancy Haberkorn.

Haberkorn had a childhood dream of becoming a clown but didn’t pursue it until 2003, when her mother had cancer and was in respite care.

“I needed some joy,” Haberkorn said. “Plus, laughter is the best medicine for everything. My mom would put on my nose and wig, and we’d laugh and laugh.”

In 2009, Haberkorn had a stroke and was a patient at Swedish, where she now gives back clowning for patients.

“If I’m going to have another stroke, what’s a better place to be?” Haberkorn said with a laugh.

“It’s just magic”

The church basement buzzed Sunday as attendees caught up and families prepped their cameras — until a hush settled across the room.

Enter the clowns.

A series of silly sketches followed, including one that involved pulling a rubber chicken out of a hat. Soon, the five graduates were marching to the beat of their own kazoos to receive their official certificates. Two other graduates were out of town and couldn’t make the ceremony, and another person who started this year’s program became a clown school dropout after an ill-fated makeup allergy.

Braeden Schilling-Smith, 17, debuted his alter ego, Mr. Fancy Pants, on Sunday.

“I’m addicted to this,” Schilling-Smith said. “Getting ready and putting on my makeup and transforming from this awkward, gay teenager to someone who makes everybody happy — it’s just magic.”

Emily Cooper, aka Lollygag, held out her clown diploma in elation as her mom, brother and boyfriend cheered from the audience. As a graduation present, Lollygag received a new pair of multi-colored patchwork clown shoes.

“It was a huge adrenaline rush to perform,” Cooper said after the ceremony. “Hopefully, this is the start of more clowning in the future.”

Realistically, Cooper said she’s working on finding a full-time job, but would love to keep clowning on the side until she builds up enough momentum to drop her day job and become a bonafide, full-time clown.

Nuanez is thrilled by the energy she’s seen from this graduating class, who she excitedly pointed out had a number of young aspiring clowns.

When Nuanez graduated clown school in 2008, she said there were 150 Colorado Clown Alley members. Now, she said membership has dwindled to about 30 to 40 clowns.

The pandemic hit clowning hard, Nuanez said, with canceled birthday parties and benefits. But Nuanez said Colorado Clown Alley is ready to get back out there and spread some cheer at charity events and other festivities.

“I love to interact with children, but I do love to interact with adults that have that inner child, as well,” Nuanez said.

Nuanez has always loved clowns. The Harvey Park resident said she remembers giggling at the clowns at the original Elitch Gardens as a girl and has always admired their ability to put a smile on people’s faces.

“They just uplift the spirit, and that’s what I wanted to do,” Nuanez said. “I wanted to make people feel the way I feel when I see a clown.”

Nuanez feels most beautiful, most herself when she’s putting on her clown makeup.

“There are times when I put on my makeup and I honestly think I look prettier,” Nuanez said. “We’re all bubbly. We have fun. It’s just joy. You forget your troubles, and we believe that laughter is the best medicine.”

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On the last day of 2021 — a year that dealt Boulder County a tragic mass shooting in the midst of ongoing pandemic woes — thousands of residents who’d evacuated Superior and Louisville waited ahead of a looming snowstorm to learn whether a wildfire had engulfed their homes.

Pushed due east by 100-mph winds, the Marshall fire sparked late Thursday morning south of Boulder, burning across 6,000 acres that afternoon and evening, destroying as many as 1,000 homes and businesses in Superior and Louisville.

The winter wildfire, which exploded amid bone-dry conditions fueled by climate warming, quickly became the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history.

In the daylight after a night of fire wreckage, gray snow clouds mixed with smoke and overwhelming fumes hung over the suburban Boulder County neighborhoods. The random path of destruction was stark as subdivisions like Coal Creek Ranch resembled scenes from disaster movies, with the smoldering debris of one house sitting next to a perfectly intact home.

Along McCaslin Boulevard in Louisville, a Subway sandwich shop and an At the Beach tanning salon were among the retail outlets scorched when the wind-driven flames reached one of the city’s strip malls. An entire hotel in Superior was swallowed by the flames.

“It’s absolutely crazy and heart-wrenching and hard to believe anything like this could ever happen,” said Andrew Muckle, a physician who has lived in Superior for 25 years and previously served as mayor.

His home survived, but so many didn’t.

During a Friday morning news conference, Gov. Jared Polis and Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle estimated up to 1,000 homes in Superior and Louisville may have been destroyed as the roaring wildfire decimated entire subdivisions with shocking speed.

Colorado’s most destructive fire, in terms of property damage, previously had been 2013’s Black Forest fire near Colorado Springs, which had torched 489 homes.

But, in a development officials pointed to as miraculous, there have been no reported deaths connected to the wildfire and no missing persons reported as of Friday afternoon.

“We might have our very own New Year’s miracle on our hands if it holds up that there’s no loss of life,” Polis said.

But KUSA-TV reported late Friday that the sheriff’s office said two people had since been reported missing. One of them is 91-year-old Nadine Turnbull, whose home burned down in Original Town Superior, the TV station reported.

No information was available at press time about the other missing person.

Officials on Thursday evening estimated at least 500 homes in Superior were burned by the wildfire, but both Polis and Pelle acknowledged in Friday’s briefing that that number likely will rise significantly, with numerous losses also reported in Louisville.

“I would estimate it’s going to be at least 500,” Pelle said. “I would not be surprised if it’s 1,000.”

Officials said there were 1,778 homes within the burn area with a total value of $825 million — but not all of them were destroyed or even damaged, and it may be another day or so before a final tally is complete.

Though not officially contained, officials said they did not expect the fire to grow larger or cause more significant damage than it already has, but some burned homes and buildings continued to smolder with smoke and lapping flames Friday, even as snow began to fall.

“There’s still areas burning inside the fire zone, around homes and shrubbery, but we’re not expecting to see any growth of the fire,” Pelle said. “I think we’re pretty well contained.”

As the fire was still burning, Pelle and other authorities advised residents and people wanting to volunteer to not return to their homes. The Colorado National Guard and police officials blocked entrances to multiple roads and neighborhood entrances, signaling for worried drivers wondering whether their homes were still standing to turn around.

The snow’s arrival to the Front Range on Friday was expected to help authorities’ efforts to snuff the remaining fire.

However, climate scientists were unsure how much relief the snow ultimately will provide, given the increasing drought and warm temperatures the Denver metro area has faced this fall. The conditions, which have become more common due to climate change, provided all of the ingredients needed to spark a wildfire, they said.

“That’s made for a quite extreme climate,” said Becky Bolinger, assistant state climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University. “We don’t experience that often.”

Cause still under investigation

Officials had said Thursday that they believed the Marshall fire likely was sparked by power lines downed by the high winds. However, the Boulder Office of Emergency Management said Friday that Xcel Energy inspected all of its power lines in the ignition area and found none that were down, according to a news update.

The utility did locate some “compromised” communication lines that people may have misidentified as power lines, Boulder emergency officials said. Telephone, cable and internet lines generally don’t start fires, officials said.

The investigation into the fire’s cause continues, emergency officials said.

Overnight, local authorities lifted all evacuation orders and pre-evacuation warnings for residents outside of Boulder County, including those in Broomfield, Westminster and Arvada. Friday afternoon, they lifted evacuation orders for part of Superior, including south of Coalton Road between Highway 128 and Rock Creek Parkway, and the Bell Flatirons Apartments.

Polis flew over the site of the Marshall fire on Friday morning. Video from the flight showed smoke rising from the rubble that used to be homes. Whole streets of homes were largely wiped out, with only a few houses still standing.

“This was a rapid fire over a period of hours with gusts up to 105 mph leap-frogging instantly over highways, over roads, across neighborhoods,” Polis said.

Pelle said the fire destruction was like a mosaic where entire blocks were leveled but then the flames left everything standing around it.

The governor spoke with President Joe Biden on Friday morning, saying he gave verbal authorization for a major disaster declaration, which will mean homeowners and small business owners won’t have to wait for preliminary damage assessment for assistance, Polis said.

A St. Francis statue watches over destroyed townhomes on Owl Drive in Louisville. pic.twitter.com/gIRCh7pLzN

— The First Noelle Phillips (@Noelle_Phillips) December 31, 2021

“Total devastation”

Kent Crawford, 75, was working from his townhome in the Ridge at Superior development Thursday afternoon, his fireplace roaring with the cable news on in the background.

His son, who lives in California and had seen news of the fires on Twitter, called Crawford and said: “Dad, you have to get out right now. There are fires.”

Crawford looked out his window — one of the highest points in Superior, he said — and said emergency vehicles had just pulled up to evacuate his complex.

He fled, taking nothing with him but the sweatpants he wore and the jacket on his back. He drove around the city, trying to find a safe place to hunker down and ride it out, but instead watched flames engulf building after building, home after home.

“It was like a bombed-out war zone,” Crawford said. “The sun was obscured by the smoke. The smell. It was surreal.”

Crawford stayed up all night and was walking around Harper Lake on Friday to pass the time. Police were still blocking the route to his home, but he had seen his complex still standing on the morning news.

“When I found out my place was OK, I got upset,” Crawford said. “Why me? I was guilty.”

Crawford said he knows at least a dozen friends whose homes are gone.

Crawford survived three huge Orange County fires in his time living in California and never thought he would be dodging burning embers in his Colorado suburbia.

“It’s tragic,” Crawford said. “Total devastation.”

Video from our reporter @ehernandez of destroyed homes on Owl Drive in Louisville from the #MarshallFire. Snow is now falling in the burn area. https://t.co/bdoRGoEM05 pic.twitter.com/F7TEfQBZ61

— The Denver Post (@denverpost) December 31, 2021

Taking shelter, waiting for news

The YMCA of Northern Colorado in Lafayette, a Red Cross evacuation center, was packed Friday morning, as evacuees took shelter, mainly waiting to find out if their homes were still standing.

Volunteers brought in and served food, toiletries, blankets and other supplies. Chaplains talked with people, mental health counselors connected with visitors and nurses provided assistance to anyone who needed it.

Veronica Llabres, 72, worried about what if anything remained of her home of 11 years in her senior living apartment in Louisville. The emotions overpowered her as she prayed with the chaplains at the shelter.

When the evacuation order was issued, Llabres packed an extra shirt, pajamas and some nuts to snack on. She wasn’t able to grab her plants or any sentimental items in her small bag.

Because she doesn’t have a car, she wasn’t sure how she would even leave, often relying on public transportation. Ultimately, she said the housing authority sent a bus to take her and other neighbors to the Lafayette shelter.

She was trying to remain positive Friday morning, and said, “when it started snowing, I felt so relieved.”

Some in the shelter like Austin Todd stayed there with their pets, waiting for word about their homes.

Todd was sitting in the gym on a cot, his two 9-year-old dogs Roxy and Wilco at his side, watching aerial footage of some of the burn area.

He was hearing from others that his townhouse of about 15 years in the Summit at Rock Creek in Superior was likely still standing, so the biggest concern for his own home was whether he still had heat and water and whether his pipes had frozen. But he also worried about the neighborhoods close by.

Todd has been concerned about the effects of climate change and what Superior would do in the case of a wildfire, particularly as his property is adjacent to open space. He said he was planning to go to the town council meeting to bring it up next week before the Marshall fire had even broken out.

“I’m in a pretty safe place. The increase in tornadoes, kind of too close to feel that. Obviously no hurricanes. I’m up on the side of a mesa that goes up, no flooding. .. The only thing I could think of is the wildfires and (that’s) exactly what happened,” he said.

Austin Todd and his dogs Roxy and Wilco came to the Lafayette shelter from their Superior home last night. Todd is hopeful his home of 15 years is still standing. #MarshallFire pic.twitter.com/nrtRcQoVtK

— Saja Hindi (@BySajaHindi) December 31, 2021

“A challenge that is unparalleled”

Former Louisville Mayor Chuck Sisk, informally known as “Mr. Louisville” for his long service on the City Council and his larger-than-life presence in this city east of Boulder, was one of the lucky ones.

His house in the Mesa Point neighborhood survived the Marshall fire, but his son’s home in Original Town Superior didn’t.

“I talked to my son and he said to me, ‘I’m homeless, dad, I’m homeless,’” Sisk said Friday. “How would you envision something like this happening? This is a catastrophe for so many families.”

Sisk, 76, returned to his home Friday night but is ready to open his door to his son, who was in South Dakota when the fire raced through the Superior.

“We’ll make room,” he said.

Meanwhile, for the residents he represented for 20 years on the council — eight of them as mayor — he hopes the city will be kind. That means reducing red tape to a minimum when it comes time to rebuild. Forgiveness of fees and an expediting of permits will be necessary to make the process for those aiming to reclaim their lives as painless as possible.

“That’s the least we can do at this stage,” Sisk said. “This is a challenge that is unparalleled but I’m confident we’ll be up to the challenge. I’ve got a lot of faith in Louisville — in our resiliency and esprit de corps.”

It’s confidence shared by current Louisville Mayor Ashley Stolzmann

“Louisville is a very strong community and we will definitely rebuild our neighborhoods,” she said.

When Olivia Mackenzie received the call that her mom — 62-year-old Lynn Murray — was inside a grocery store with an active shooter, she raced down from Nederland, driving with a brace on her broken leg amid blowing snow.

“I was just praying that I didn’t crash, break my leg even more and that my mom was alive,” the 24-year-old said.

Mackenzie hoped her mom was a hostage who would make it out of the store where she was working as an Instacart shopper.

Murray was a retired photo director who previously lived in New York and worked for big-name magazines like Glamour, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan.

Tears filling her eyes, Mackenzie said, “My mom was the least deserving person to die this way.”

Mackenzie described her mom as her favorite person.

“She was the most beautiful person I ever met,” Mackenzie said. “She is the warmest, kindest, most positive person.”

Mackenzie said her mom was an artist who could pick up a pen and casually doodle a beautiful drawing. Mackenzie had a brain seizure when she was 8 years old on Mother’s Day, and her mother found her nearly dead.

“She slept with me every night,” Mackenzie said. “We became so close. Her dedication to being a mom was everything.”

Murray is also survived by a son, Pierce, and a husband, John Mackenzie.

Murray grew up in Mentor, Ohio, and attended Ohio University. Mackenzie said her mother was “an amazing cook” who did gig work after retiring. Along with her Instacart job, she also worked for Uber and Lyft.

At Ohio University, Murray was part of the earliest foundation of students in what would become the School of Visual Communication, according to a statement from professor emeritus Terry Eiler.

“Lynn was part of a tight knit group of students that wanted to head to New York City after graduation to chase the world of commercial, advertising and magazine work,” Eiler said. “Lynn had an infectious smile and engaging personality, as many have noted. She also had a work ethic that was extraordinary.

“Once she landed at Conde Nast, I knew she would find her way into leadership. Her talent was great, and her personality was friendly.”

Mackenzie said her mother was “the biggest light in everybody’s life” and would do anything for anybody. “You can’t say anything bad about her.”

But the loss and grief felt immediately in Colorado and across the nation after another mass shooting isn’t dependent on the gunman’s motive.

Once again, Colorado grappled Tuesday with the aftermath of a mass shooting that ended the lives of people who were going about their daily business. Phones rang across the state late into the night as law enforcement searched until 4 a.m. Tuesday for family members of the victims.

“The families have been notified, everybody quietly hoping that it wasn’t your friend or your co-worker or your family member,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said at a morning news briefing in Boulder, adding later: “This loss is especially painful for the friends and family members of those left behind, and as governor, I offer my condolences to all those who suffer loss, but this is a loss for all of us, and we mourn those who fell as a state, and we mourn them as a nation.”

The suspected gunman, who investigators say purchased one of his weapons six days before the shooting, surrendered to police after being shot in the leg. He did not answer many questions asked by arresting officers, and is expected to face 10 counts of first-degree murder as the county’s top prosecutor promised the suspect “will be held fully responsible.”

The dead, publicly identified Tuesday morning, include a Boulder police officer, father to seven, who arrived first at the King Soopers in south Boulder and rushed into danger. A shy 23-year-old — son of Serbian refugees who came to the U.S. to start a new life — died alone in his car after being shot. Three store employees died in their workplace after months of working through a deadly pandemic. A newly-engaged Boulder business owner and a soon-to-be grandfather, both dead. Retirees, an artist, a model plane enthusiast — gone.

The nation lowered its flags Tuesday for the victims of the Boulder mass killing — just hours after they had been raised again following a man’s deadly shooting rampage that killed eight people in the Atlanta area. President Joe Biden in a speech offered condolences to the Boulder victims’ families and said he’s been through too many similar shootings.

“I hate to say it, because we say it so often: My heart goes out, our hearts go out to the survivors who had to flee for their lives and who hid, terrified, unsure if they’d ever see their families again, their friends again,” Biden said.

Mourners from across the Denver area came to the King Soopers, still encircled by a chain-link fence. They twined flowers into the fence and attached heartfelt notes. Others quietly bore witness, standing in intermittent snow with hands clasped in prayer, fingers cupped around a candle or arms wrapped around one another to contain heaving sobs.

“Our community is hurting, so I’m hurting,” said Jessica Fisher, 40, who left flowers at her shuttered neighborhood grocery store. “We’re angry. We’re scared.”

An ongoing investigation

Boulder police Chief Maris Herold on Tuesday identified the suspect as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa. Authorities said there is an extensive investigation into his background and that he has lived in the U.S. for most of his life.

Police responded at 2:40 p.m. Monday to the King Soopers at 3600 Table Mesa Drive after reports of an active shooter. Witnesses told police that the suspect shot out the window in a vehicle, that he chased a man toward a nearby street and that he fired multiple shots inside the grocery store, according to an arrest affidavit released Tuesday.

King Soopers employees at the scene told police they saw the suspect shoot a man in the parking lot, then stand over the fallen man and shoot him several more times, the affidavit states.

Officers entered the building within minutes and exchanged gunfire with the suspect, shooting him in the leg, police said. The first officer on scene, Eric Talley, died in the store.

Alissa surrendered after more officers entered the store while carrying body shields, about 50 minutes after the initial 911 calls, according to the affidavit. He had taken off most of his clothes, laid down his guns and walked backwards toward the officers, the affidavit states.

Alissa did not answer many of the arresting officers’ questions, but asked for his mother, according to the affidavit. The arresting officers did not believe Alissa was impaired by drugs or alcohol and took him to a hospital for treatment of his wound.

He was booked into the Boulder County Jail at 10:49 a.m. Tuesday after being discharged from the hospital and is scheduled to make a first court appearance Thursday morning.

Law enforcement and crime scene analysts investigated the scene for hours after the shooting — the last victim’s body wasn’t removed from the scene until 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Officers found a handgun and a rifle next to Alissa’s bloody clothes and tactical vest inside the store. Police learned that the suspect purchased a Ruger AR-556 pistol on March 16 — six days before the shooting. The Ruger guns are equipped to function similarly to a rifle and have barrels up to 10.5 inches long.

Fifteen miles from the grocery store, FBI agents arrived about 9:30 p.m. Monday at Alissa’s home in a quiet Arvada neighborhood of single-family homes.

“We could hear them on a loudspeaker, ‘Please come to the door, this is the FBI,’” neighbor Matt Benz said.

The agents then brought several people out of the home and interviewed them on the street corner, Benz said.

Alissa has a minor criminal history in Colorado, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and court records, including a 2018 conviction for misdemeanor assault.

Arvada police Detective Dave Snelling would not say whether local police had received any warnings or complaints about Alissa recently, however, and instead deferred the question to the FBI.

“You don’t know what can happen anymore”

The compounding trauma gun violence has inflicted on Colorado was present at the impromptu memorial that slowly grew outside the King Soopers store Tuesday while investigators did their work inside a barrier of fencing and police tape.

Ryan Evans, 41, drove from Lakewood to leave flowers. He was a student at the University of Colorado Boulder when the Columbine High School shooting happened in 1999. As a member of the university’s ROTC program, he served a pallbearer for Columbine victim Kyle Velasquez.

Evans called the Table Mesa area his “happy place,” which he visits frequently to hike. He brought his children up just a few weeks ago.

“That,” he said of the King Soopers shooting, ”will not dictate what this place and this community means to me.”

Boulder Mayor Sam Weaver said the people killed at the grocery store were going about their daily business and “had family and friends, loves and passions and dreams of tomorrows that will no longer come.”

Madeline Gaglio, 13, came to pay her respects along with her grandmother. The teenager, who grew up in Boulder, said she felt scared when she and her grandmother went to buy flowers at another King Soopers to lay at the memorial.

“You don’t know what can happen anymore,” Gaglio said.

Denver Post staff writers Shelly Bradbury and Conrad Swanson contributed to this report. 

Police have not confirmed the number of fatalities, but a source with knowledge of the investigation told the Daily Camera newspaper that there are at least six people killed.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said during an evening news conference that a suspect was taken into custody and is being treated for injuries.

Boulder police Cmdr. Kerry Yamaguchi said one of the people killed at the store was a police officer.

“There was loss of life,” Yamaguchi said. “We have multiple people who were killed in this incident.”

The only person who suffered a significant injury was the suspect, Yamaguchi said. The suspect was taken to Boulder Community Health’s Foothills Hospital.

“This is a tragedy and a nightmare for Boulder County,” Dougherty said at the news conference in the parking lot of the grocery store, now surrounded in crime scene tape.

When reporters pressed Yamaguchi for more details on the killing, Dougherty stepped in to emphasize that authorities will not rush the release of information, particularly when it comes to information about those killed in the shooting.

“A lot of things are being realized as the crime scene is being processed, including the number of victims, which is known to police investigators,” Dougherty said. “But I want to stress that victims’ family members are still be notified. We being very sensitive to the victim’s families.”

Yamaguchi did say there is no ongoing threat to the community.

Another situation that required a SWAT team response in Boulder on Monday, this one at 17th and Grove streets, appears to have been unrelated, he said.

King Soopers spokeswoman Kelli McGannon said the company is cooperating with investigators and will be deferring to law enforcement on all inquiries about the shooting. “Our hearts are broken over this senseless act of violence,” she said.

“He just came in and started shooting”

Video live-streamed by a bystander at the King Soopers at 3600 Table Mesa Drive showed what appeared to be shooting victims, and witnesses told The Denver Post of seeing at least one person who’d been shot.

That live-streamed video also showed a man wearing only shorts being removed from the store in handcuffs after police went in. One of his legs was covered in blood. It’s not clear if the man was a shooting suspect or whether he was arrested.

Two roommates who live near the King Soopers told The Denver Post they were at the self-checkout buying a pizza for lunch when a gunman entered the store.

“He didn’t say shit,” said one of them, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid national media attention. “He just came in and started shooting.”

The other witness said the gunman “let off a couple of shots, then was silent, and then he let off a couple more. He wasn’t spraying.”

The two men were able to escape out the back of the store.

ALERT: Active Shooter at the King Soopers on Table Mesa. AVOID THE AREA. PIO is en-route.

— Boulder Police Dept. (@boulderpolice) March 22, 2021

Boulder Police Department officials tweeted a warning at 2:49 p.m. Monday for people to avoid the area because of an active shooter. A public information officer was on the way to the scene. Further information was not immediately provided.

Law enforcement vehicles and officers massed outside the grocery store, including SWAT teams, and at least three helicopters were over the roof of the store .

Some windows at the front of the store were broken. Authorities over a loudspeaker said the building was surrounded and that “you need to surrender.” They said to come out with hands up and unarmed.

The FBI said it’s helping in the investigation at the request of Boulder police.

Shoppers fled gunfire

Sarah Moonshadow and her son, Nicolas Edwards, had just finished paying for strawberries when two shots rang out. She told her son to get down.

“We just ran,” Moonshadow said.

They felt the concussions of shots as they sprinted out. Outside, a body was lying in the parking lot and Moonshadow started toward it. “My son said, ‘No, Mom! We can’t do anything.’”

By the time they got outside, Edwards said police were flying into the parking lot and pulled up next to the body.

“I knew we couldn’t do anything for the guy” he said. “We had to go.”

They got across the street and hid behind a rock at an apartment

Moonshadow and her son were waiting outside the crime scene because their truck was still in the lot. Their 3-year-old pit bull, Rollo, was inside the truck

James Bentz said he was inside the store when the shooting happened. He said he was in the meat section when he heard what he thought was a misfire, then a series of pops.

“I was then at the front of a stampede,” he said.

Bentz said he ended up jumping off the back loading dock to escape. He said younger people in the store were taking care of older people, helping them off the dock.

“It seemed like all of us had imagined we’d be in a situation like this at some point in our lives,” he said.

Neven Sloan and his wife, Quinlyn, said they were in the store when shots were fired. He was in produce; she was in dairy. They ran to find each other and then escaped.

The shots “were muffled at first and then I heard it echo in the store and I knew we needed to get out,” Neven Sloan said.

He ran back inside to help others out once he knew his wife was safely outside.

“I felt an impulse to go back,” he said.

Quinlyn Sloan said she didn’t know what the first big noise was, and then “people started running. A few stood still like they didn’t know what was happening. Then it (the shooting) went rapidly.”

Video shot at the scene

A YouTube user was live-streaming from the scene starting at roughly 2:30 p.m. His video showed what appear to be shooting victims, and police approaching the front of the badly damaged store in an armored vehicle.

During the video, a man wearing a King Soopers’ employee uniform said the shooter was inside the store, and then what sounded like two gunshots could be heard.

The bystander then retreated, passing by a light-colored Toyota SUV that was parked at the base of an entrance ramp to the store. As he fled, the bystander shouted at others outside to get away.

The King Soopers store anchors a large shopping center in the southern part of Boulder, a few blocks from Fairview High School.

King Soopers officials have not responded to repeated Post requests for comment. The local chapter of the UFCW labor union took to Twitter to say members are keeping an eye on developments from the shooting.

“We are praying that all the #grocery workers and shoppers today – including our 32 members that work at this store—are safe and unharmed,” UFCW officials tweeted.

The Boulder Valley School District is on spring break this week. District spokeswoman Randy Barber said two sports teams were practicing at the high school when the situation began. Once district officials learned what was happening, they sent all students home.

Employees were still locked down inside Murphy’s South, a restaurant and bar on Broadway, as of 4:30 p.m. The business is around the corner from the King Soopers store in an adjacent shopping complex.

Bartender Jordan Michaels said he and his co-workers saw police officers running down the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, then had an officer tell them to lock the doors and hide in the back. Other officers in tactical gear came by later and tried the doors to make sure they were locked.

“All the buildings on this side of the complex are locked down. We’re just hunkering and watching the news and waiting for the all-clear,” Michaels said. “There are people in every store. All the doors are locked and no one’s left.”

Around 5:10 p.m., police tweeted that they were asking people living near 17th and Grove streets in Boulder to shelter in place while officers responded to a report of an “armed, dangerous individual.” Police said they were trying to determine whether it was related to the King Soopers shooting.

Police surrounded a home on 17th and blocked the street. Two armored vehicles are parked outside.

The shelter-in-place order was lifted around 6:40 p.m.

Gov. Jared Polis tweeted just after 4 p.m. that he was “closely watching unfolding events” at the store.”My prayers are with our fellow Coloradans in this time of sadness and grief as we learn more about the extent of the tragedy.”

U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Lafayette, tweeted that he was “praying for the entire #Boulder community & all of the first responders and law enforcement responding to this terrible incident.”

Past shootings

In November 2017, Scott Ostrem walked into a Walmart in Thornton and fired seven shots in 20 seconds, killing Victor Vasquez, 26, Carlos Moreno, 66, and Pamela Marques, 53. Ostrem was later given three life sentences. A motive was never made clear.

The last mass shooting at a grocery store was at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, in which 22 people died and 26 were injured. That shooter targeted Latinos, and has not gone to trial yet on more than 90 federal charges.

And in October 2018, a white man fatally shot two Black people at a Kroger store in Louisville, Ky.; the man pleaded guilty just last week to federal hate crime and gun charges.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

This is a developing story and will be updated. The Denver Post does not report off of police radio traffic, which can be unreliable. Our information will generally come from officials and eyewitnesses and, at times, other media with a track record of accuracy. In fast-moving situations like this, authorities sometimes alter their statements in the wake of new information. The Denver Post will update the story as quickly as possible to correct any errors.

Police have not confirmed the number of fatalities, but a source with knowledge of the investigation told the Daily Camera newspaper that there are at least six people killed.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said during an evening news conference that a suspect was taken into custody and is being treated for injuries.

Boulder police Cmdr. Kerry Yamaguchi said one of the people killed at the store was a police officer.

“There was loss of life,” Yamaguchi said. “We have multiple people who were killed in this incident.”

The only person who suffered a significant injury was the suspect, Yamaguchi said. The suspect was taken to Boulder Community Health’s Foothills Hospital.

“This is a tragedy and a nightmare for Boulder County,” Dougherty said at the news conference in the parking lot of the grocery store, now surrounded in crime scene tape.

When reporters pressed Yamaguchi for more details on the killing, Dougherty stepped in to emphasize that authorities will not rush the release of information, particularly when it comes to information about those killed in the shooting.

“A lot of things are being realized as the crime scene is being processed, including the number of victims, which is known to police investigators,” Dougherty said. “But I want to stress that victims’ family members are still be notified. We being very sensitive to the victim’s families.”

Yamaguchi did say there is no ongoing threat to the community.

Another situation that required a SWAT team response in Boulder on Monday, this one at 17th and Grove streets, appears to have been unrelated, he said.

King Soopers spokeswoman Kelli McGannon said the company is cooperating with investigators and will be deferring to law enforcement on all inquiries about the shooting. “Our hearts are broken over this senseless act of violence,” she said.

“He just came in and started shooting”

Video live-streamed by a bystander at the King Soopers at 3600 Table Mesa Drive showed what appeared to be shooting victims, and witnesses told The Denver Post of seeing at least one person who’d been shot.

That live-streamed video also showed a man wearing only shorts being removed from the store in handcuffs after police went in. One of his legs was covered in blood. It’s not clear if the man was a shooting suspect or whether he was arrested.

Two roommates who live near the King Soopers told The Denver Post they were at the self-checkout buying a pizza for lunch when a gunman entered the store.

“He didn’t say shit,” said one of them, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid national media attention. “He just came in and started shooting.”

The other witness said the gunman “let off a couple of shots, then was silent, and then he let off a couple more. He wasn’t spraying.”

The two men were able to escape out the back of the store.

ALERT: Active Shooter at the King Soopers on Table Mesa. AVOID THE AREA. PIO is en-route.

— Boulder Police Dept. (@boulderpolice) March 22, 2021

Boulder Police Department officials tweeted a warning at 2:49 p.m. Monday for people to avoid the area because of an active shooter. A public information officer was on the way to the scene. Further information was not immediately provided.

Law enforcement vehicles and officers massed outside the grocery store, including SWAT teams, and at least three helicopters were over the roof of the store .

Some windows at the front of the store were broken. Authorities over a loudspeaker said the building was surrounded and that “you need to surrender.” They said to come out with hands up and unarmed.

The FBI said it’s helping in the investigation at the request of Boulder police.

Shoppers fled gunfire

Sarah Moonshadow and her son, Nicolas Edwards, had just finished paying for strawberries when two shots rang out. She told her son to get down.

“We just ran,” Moonshadow said.

They felt the concussions of shots as they sprinted out. Outside, a body was lying in the parking lot and Moonshadow started toward it. “My son said, ‘No, Mom! We can’t do anything.’”

By the time they got outside, Edwards said police were flying into the parking lot and pulled up next to the body.

“I knew we couldn’t do anything for the guy” he said. “We had to go.”

They got across the street and hid behind a rock at an apartment

Moonshadow and her son were waiting outside the crime scene because their truck was still in the lot. Their 3-year-old pit bull, Rollo, was inside the truck

James Bentz said he was inside the store when the shooting happened. He said he was in the meat section when he heard what he thought was a misfire, then a series of pops.

“I was then at the front of a stampede,” he said.

Bentz said he ended up jumping off the back loading dock to escape. He said younger people in the store were taking care of older people, helping them off the dock.

“It seemed like all of us had imagined we’d be in a situation like this at some point in our lives,” he said.

Neven Sloan and his wife, Quinlyn, said they were in the store when shots were fired. He was in produce; she was in dairy. They ran to find each other and then escaped.

The shots “were muffled at first and then I heard it echo in the store and I knew we needed to get out,” Neven Sloan said.

He ran back inside to help others out once he knew his wife was safely outside.

“I felt an impulse to go back,” he said.

Quinlyn Sloan said she didn’t know what the first big noise was, and then “people started running. A few stood still like they didn’t know what was happening. Then it (the shooting) went rapidly.”

Video shot at the scene

A YouTube user was live-streaming from the scene starting at roughly 2:30 p.m. His video showed what appear to be shooting victims, and police approaching the front of the badly damaged store in an armored vehicle.

During the video, a man wearing a King Soopers’ employee uniform said the shooter was inside the store, and then what sounded like two gunshots could be heard.

The bystander then retreated, passing by a light-colored Toyota SUV that was parked at the base of an entrance ramp to the store. As he fled, the bystander shouted at others outside to get away.

The King Soopers store anchors a large shopping center in the southern part of Boulder, a few blocks from Fairview High School.

King Soopers officials have not responded to repeated Post requests for comment. The local chapter of the UFCW labor union took to Twitter to say members are keeping an eye on developments from the shooting.

“We are praying that all the #grocery workers and shoppers today – including our 32 members that work at this store—are safe and unharmed,” UFCW officials tweeted.

The Boulder Valley School District is on spring break this week. District spokeswoman Randy Barber said two sports teams were practicing at the high school when the situation began. Once district officials learned what was happening, they sent all students home.

Employees were still locked down inside Murphy’s South, a restaurant and bar on Broadway, as of 4:30 p.m. The business is around the corner from the King Soopers store in an adjacent shopping complex.

Bartender Jordan Michaels said he and his co-workers saw police officers running down the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, then had an officer tell them to lock the doors and hide in the back. Other officers in tactical gear came by later and tried the doors to make sure they were locked.

“All the buildings on this side of the complex are locked down. We’re just hunkering and watching the news and waiting for the all-clear,” Michaels said. “There are people in every store. All the doors are locked and no one’s left.”

Around 5:10 p.m., police tweeted that they were asking people living near 17th and Grove streets in Boulder to shelter in place while officers responded to a report of an “armed, dangerous individual.” Police said they were trying to determine whether it was related to the King Soopers shooting.

Police surrounded a home on 17th and blocked the street. Two armored vehicles are parked outside.

The shelter-in-place order was lifted around 6:40 p.m.

Gov. Jared Polis tweeted just after 4 p.m. that he was “closely watching unfolding events” at the store.”My prayers are with our fellow Coloradans in this time of sadness and grief as we learn more about the extent of the tragedy.”

U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Lafayette, tweeted that he was “praying for the entire #Boulder community & all of the first responders and law enforcement responding to this terrible incident.”

Past shootings

In November 2017, Scott Ostrem walked into a Walmart in Thornton and fired seven shots in 20 seconds, killing Victor Vasquez, 26, Carlos Moreno, 66, and Pamela Marques, 53. Ostrem was later given three life sentences. A motive was never made clear.

The last mass shooting at a grocery store was at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, in which 22 people died and 26 were injured. That shooter targeted Latinos, and has not gone to trial yet on more than 90 federal charges.

And in October 2018, a white man fatally shot two Black people at a Kroger store in Louisville, Ky.; the man pleaded guilty just last week to federal hate crime and gun charges.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

This is a developing story and will be updated. The Denver Post does not report off of police radio traffic, which can be unreliable. Our information will generally come from officials and eyewitnesses and, at times, other media with a track record of accuracy. In fast-moving situations like this, authorities sometimes alter their statements in the wake of new information. The Denver Post will update the story as quickly as possible to correct any errors.

The suspect was taken into custody, but there were few answers in the following hours. Officials said it would take days to investigate the large crime scene and to notify families that their loved ones had been killed.

The workers and shoppers who survived the violent scene in the Front Range college town fled the store any way they could — if they couldn’t, they took shelter inside — as the shots echoed.

“It seemed like all of us had imagined we’d be in a situation like this at some point in our lives,” 57-year-old James Bentz said.

Boulder police Chief Maris Herold identified the deceased officer at a news conference Monday night as 51-year-old Eric Talley, who had been with the department since 2010 and was first on the scene of the shooting.

The names of the other victims were not publicly known as of late Monday night.

At about 7:45 p.m., a long procession of police vehicles and ambulances, their lights flashing in the night, drove away from the grocery store to escort Talley’s body.

Officer Mark Bliley, head of the Boulder Police Department’s union, said Talley was a close friend who was passionate about policing. On the job, Talley had a unique ability to connect with people, Bliley said.

“He was just a highly respected, well-loved person and officer,” Bliley said. “Just a solid person … I don’t know of anyone who didn’t like Eric.”

The suspect, a man, was in custody and being treated for injuries, Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said, but he was not identified nor any motive ventured as of Monday night. The FBI is helping investigate at the request of Boulder police.

Police said the gunman was reported to have been carrying a rifle.

“He just came in and started shooting”

The shooting started sometime after 2:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the store at 3600 Table Mesa Drive. A livestream video, taken by local videographer Dean Schiller, who had just walked out of the store, showed what appeared to be victims and a man wearing a King Soopers employee uniform saying the shooter was inside the store.

Then what sounded like two gunshots could be heard over the video.

Two roommates who were buying pizza at the self-checkout watched the shooter come into the store. “He just came in and started shooting” without saying a word, one of them told The Denver Post on condition of anonymity to avoid national media attention. His roommate said the gunman “let off a couple of shots, then was silent, and then he let off a couple more. He wasn’t spraying.”

Outside, law enforcement from all over the Front Range — Jefferson County, Erie, Boulder, Longmont — was quick to respond. The Denver Police Department sent about 30 people. They came in fire trucks, ambulances, armored vehicles, helicopters and regular police cars. They even used drones to respond to the shooting.

Some wore body armor and carried rifles. Some walked on top of the store, others inside, others manning vehicles that rammed the front of the building. Authorities over a loudspeaker said the building was surrounded and that “you need to surrender.” They said to come out with hands up and unarmed.

About an hour into the livestream, a bearded, balding man was taken out of the store by police in handcuffs, wearing no shirt and no shoes, just a pair of black elastic-waist shorts and his right leg bloodied. It wasn’t known as of Monday night if this was the shooter.

King Soopers spokeswoman Kelli McGannon said the company is cooperating with investigators and will be deferring to law enforcement on all inquiries about the shooting.

“Our hearts are broken over this senseless act of violence,” she said.

Watching from rooftops

The King Soopers anchors the shopping center, which is a little less than two miles from the University of Colorado campus, and includes a bank, an auto shop, restaurants and an animal hospital. It was completely blocked off by law enforcement on Monday. Main roads around the shopping center were blocked off, too.

Young people stood on the roofs of houses across the street trying to see what was going on during daylight. And dozens of people milled about, walking their dogs and trying to catch a view of the scene, before police told them to go away.

Some people were showing up to see if they could find their relatives, who were King Soopers employees, because they weren’t able to get a hold of them. They declined to speak with The Post.

Steven McHugh said his son-in-law and his two granddaughters, ages 13 and 14, were in the store as their dad got a COVID-19 vaccination. McHugh said he was told his family watched people get shot and managed to run to a staff area and hide in a coat closet until police rescued them.

“They’re in seventh and eighth grade,” he said of his granddaughters’ experience. “This is completely fricking terrifying. This is unacceptable.”

Several unharmed people who had been sheltering inside the King Soopers were escorted out by officers in the late afternoon; Post reporters saw the witnesses loaded onto buses to be taken away from the scene.

“This is a tragedy and a nightmare for Boulder County,” Dougherty said at an early evening news conference.

This is not the first mass shooting in Colorado, Dougherty acknowledged later Monday night. But in all cases, he said, law enforcement officers from surrounding areas and from local state and federal agents have rallied to support the communities.

Backed by acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado Matthew Kirsch, Dougherty said that will happen again in this case.

“I also want to stress how incredibly sorry I am for all the victims who were killed in King Soopers,” he said. “These were people going about their day, doing their food shopping and their lives were cut abruptly and tragically short by the shooter who is now in custody.”

“Enough is a enough”

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued a statement late Monday evening about the “devastating news.”

“This year we have all been surrounded by loss of life, illness and isolation, and the deep grief that has accompanied the loss of life as we knew it,” Polis said. “As spring sprung this weekend, and vaccines continue to get into arms, lightness creeped back in only for the darkness to descend on us again today. Today we saw the face of evil. I am grieving with my community and all Coloradans.”

U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse — who represents Boulder, has lived in the county for years and whose wife was born there — called Monday’s mass shooting “devastating” in a statement and called for changing gun laws because “Americans should feel safe in their grocery stores … their schools, their movie theaters and in their communities.”

“Twenty-one years ago, as a young student in Douglas County, I joined many Coloradans in weeping for the victims of the terrible massacre at Columbine High 10 minutes from my high school,” he said in a statement. “Two years ago, I felt the fear that so many Coloradans experienced learning of the shooting at the STEM School in Highlands Ranch, where my niece — a kindergartner — was locked down, as we all wept at the tragic loss of life.

“And tonight, I weep for the families of my constituents, who have tragically lost their lives in yet another mass shooting. Enough is enough.”

The King Soopers shooting comes more than three years after Scott Ostrem walked into a Walmart in Thornton and fired seven shots in 20 seconds, killing Victor Vasquez, 26, Carlos Moreno, 66, and Pamela Marques, 53. Ostrem was later given three life sentences for the November 2017 shooting. A motive was never made clear.

The last mass shooting at a grocery store was at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, in which 22 people died and 26 were injured. That shooter targeted Latinos, and has not gone to trial yet on more than 90 federal charges.

And in October 2018, a white man fatally shot two Black people at a Kroger store in Louisville, Ky.; the man pleaded guilty just last week to federal hate crime and gun charges.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Golden-based institution ranked fourth in the nation when brain training program Lumosity analyzed students’ game results from 461 colleges. The games dabbled in mental abilities like attention, memory, processing speed and flexibility, according to a Lumosity news release.

Colorado School of Mines came in behind Dartmouth College, Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but sat one ranking above Harvard University.

“Other college rankings, like the ones in U.S. News & World Report, are based on factors ranging from academic performance to alumni giving and financial resources,” said Bob Schafer, Ph.D., the vice president of research at Lumosity. “What’s truly unique about the Lumosity rankings is our ability to focus instead on a student population’s core cognitive abilities. It turns out that performance on these games is strongly correlated with standardized test scores, and many schools at the top of the list won’t surprise you. But there are also a handful of schools that you might not expect. The student bodies of these schools have memory, speed, attention and flexibility skills that make them stand out.”

The analysis was restricted to Lumosity users who finished the program’s three-game fit test and fell between the ages of 17 and 24 as of August 2017, the news release said. To be included in the analysis, users had to register with the program using a .edu email address or connect to Lumosity through an IP address associated with a college or university during the 2017-2018 academic year.

The study also included only institutions with at least 50 users who met the criteria.

Colorado School of Mines ranked highest out of all the colleges in a game called “Train of Thought” that exercises attention and planning skills.