Friends hold vigil for barkeep

Brad Kottke was a familiar face at Highland Tavern, a neighborhood bar close to his Sloan’s Lake home.

Regulars never quite understood why he set aside his master’s degree to work at a bar. One suspected he was inspired to pursue a free-spirited life after reading Henry David Thoreau (Kottke was a poet whose bedroom resembled a library). But they all could tell Kottke loved it at that bar, his boisterous laugh always giving away his location.

On March 18, at 12:20 p.m., Kottke was walking home from a grocery store when he was shot several times near the corner of Grove Street and West 25th Avenue. He was taken to a hospital, where he died. His case is still an active investigation.

On Sunday, about 40 Sloan’s Lake neighbors, Highland Tavern regulars and a few of Kottke’s friends gathered on the corner near where he was shot to hold a vigil and to call for an end to gun violence.

“We’re all pretty devastated,” said Paul Crites, a bar regular and neighbor. “He was everybody’s friend.”

The event was put on by the Sloan’s Lake Citizens’ Group. Many of the people in attendance were from the neighborhood but didn’t know Kottke personally. The neighborhood association distributed Crime Stoppers flyers asking for tips about the shooting. The association also encouraged people to consider a neighborhood watch.

Thomas Brunn, vice president of the neighborhood association, wore a button calling for an end to gun violence, saying he never leaves home without it.

“(Kottke’s shooting has) gotten a lot of the neighbors concerned about the randomness of it,” he said. “We wanted to shine a light on it.”

Denver Police Department’s District One Commander Paul Pazen attended the gathering but declined to give updates on the investigation, saying a vigil was not the right place. Instead, he invited neighbors to attend a community meeting Monday

at 1311 West 46th Ave.

“This is very atypical,” Pazen said of the shooting after the vigil. “It’s an extremely strong neighborhood.”

District One, which covers Sloan’s Lake, Highland, Globeville, Berkeley and West Colfax, had three homicides last year and three the year before. Pazen said that number was low considering the area has 125,000 residents.

“We’re looking really hard,” he said. “We’re not waiting for information to come to us. I can tell you that.”

Kottke’s was one of four shootings reported in Den- ver during the weekend of March 17-18. A person was shot while driving near Colfax Avenue and North Lowell Boulevard. A man was shot near West Mississippi Avenue and South Raritan Street. A juvenile male was shot several times near East 37th Avenue and Fillmore Street.

In 2016, 781 people in Colorado died from gunshot wounds, according to state mortality data. Of those, 605 were suicides and 158 were homicides. The remaining were unintentional or of undetermined intent.

Black men and women in Denver are twice as likely to die from gunshots — and five times as likely to be murdered by gunfire — than white men and women, according to a report from Denver Public Health.

Colorado has displayed a divisive political history on guns.

Most recently, Gov. John Hickenlooper and state Democratic lawmakers have been pushing for a “red flag law” that would allow judges to temporarily seize guns from people they consider a threat. It is unclear how the measure would be met by Republicans, although some have expressed concerns over due process, infringing on people’s rights and overlapping existing laws.

So far this session, GOP lawmakers have unsuccessfully attempted to roll back some of Colorado’s gun laws and loosen restrictions on where, when and how people can use firearms. Denver passed a ban on bump stocks that saw zero engagement from locals when it came time to turn the devices in. A statewide ban was killed by Republicans.

In February, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment took to social media, calling for a repeal of the Dickey Amendment, a federal policy that bans federal funding for gun violence research.

Back in 2013, Democratic legislation banned gun magazines with more than 15 rounds of ammunition following the Aurora movie theater shooting. The move led critics to recall two sitting Democratic lawmakers.