Officers get suspension after fatal shooting

Two Denver police officers will serve 90 days of unpaid suspension for killing a man and injuring another after erroneously identifying one of the men as an attempted homicide suspect.

Officers Susan Mercado and Austin Barela avoided being fired — the presumptive penalty for a policy violation that could result in serious injury or death — because the Denver Department of Public Safety found that the officers shot at a man they reasonably believed to be an escaped inmate who was considered dangerous and suspected of attempted murder.

Instead of shooting at the escapee, they were firing at two other men, 27-year-old Steven Lee Nguyen and 24year-old Rafael Landeros Jr. The two men fled from police who were watching a residence they thought the escaped inmate, Mauricio Venzor-Gonzalez, might return to.

The officers killed Nguyen and wounded Landeros during the March 19, 2018, incident.

“While Officer Barela’s belief that he was in a situation that permitted him to use deadly force was not reasonable, his belief that he was engaging a violent, dangerous felon was,” Deputy Director of Public Safety Mary Dulacki wrote in Barela’s disciplinary letter, obtained by The Denver Post through an openrecords request. “This belief, taken in the context of a rapidly evolving situation, warrants a penalty in the mitigated range.”

The March 19 incident began when Venzor-Gonzalez escaped from Denver sheriff’s deputies who were transporting him to a medical appointment. Venzor-Gonzalez had not been handcuffed and when he exited the sheriff’s van, he climbed over a gate and ran away.

Later that day, officers were watching the home of Venzor-Gonzalez’s girlfriend in case he came there, according to Mercado’s and Barela’s disciplinary letters. About 6:20 p.m., an SUV with two men in the front seat circled the home several times. The passenger covered his face with his sweatshirt, according to the letters. When Venzor-Gonzalez’s girlfriend left the house and drove away, the suspect car followed closely behind her.

Two detectives in the fugitive unit relayed that they believed the passenger was Venzor-Gonzalez. Officers from Denver and Aurora followed the SUV and attempted to stop the vehicle, but it fled into the Northeast Park Hill neighborhood.

Multiple police cars pursued the SUV. During the pursuit, Barela believed he saw the passenger in the SUV throw a gun out the window. The object was later determined to be a box containing methamphetamine.

The SUV soon ran off the road and stopped near the Park Hill Golf Club and Barela exited his patrol car, demanding that the passenger show his hands. Barela later told investigators that he saw the passenger door open briefly. Barela opened fire because he believed the passenger might start shooting at officers. While he fired, the vehicle started rolling down a hill toward a drainage ditch. Barela continued to fire and later told investigators he that fired until he saw the men inside stop moving.

Barela fired an entire magazine of rounds, reloaded, and fired another magazine of rounds until he didn’t see any more movement in the SUV. Another officer, William Bohm, also opened fire after hearing Barela’s gunshots and believed they were being fired upon. Investigators later found that Barela fired 34 rounds and Bohm fired 12 times.

Mercado arrived on scene after the two officers began firing. She exited her car and ran toward the SUV and fired twice as it slid down the hill. She said in a later interview that she fired because she feared the suspect would escape and that she believed the suspect was shooting.

Two other officers, when they arrived on scene, did not fire their weapons and instead took cover behind their cars.

When officers approached the vehicle at the bottom of the drainage ditch, they realized they had mistakenly identified the passenger. Nguyen, who had been driving the SUV, died at the scene of three gunshot wounds. Landeros, in the passenger seat, had a graze wound on his abdomen.

Officers found a loaded handgun in the door of the SUV but there was no evidence it had been fired during the incident, according to the disciplinary letters.

In a later interview with police, Landeros said he knew Venzor-Gonzalez but that they had nothing to do with his escape. He said he and Nguyen fled police because they both had warrants and were driving a stolen car.

The Department of Public Safety found that both Barela and Mercado violated department policy that strictly limits shooting at moving vehicles and that their use of deadly force was “neither reasonable or necessary,” the officers’ disciplinary letters state.

Neither were confronted with an imminent use of deadly force, Dulacki wrote, and Barela never sought cover before advancing, which placed him in a “vulnerable position that may have contributed to the fear that factored in his decision to fire his weapon.” Mercado failed to take the time to assess the situation before firing, Dulacki wrote.

“An ordinary and prudent police officer facing similar circumstances would not act or think in a similar way,” Dulacki wrote in Barela’s letter, citing the two other officers who arrived on scene who did not fire their guns.

But Barela and Mercado were not fired because the department found that their belief they were pursuing an escaped inmate suspected of firing at police was reasonable. Mercado joined the department in 2008 and Barela joined in 2014.

Bohm, the third officer who fired that day, has not yet been disciplined in connection to the case.

Denver District Attorney Beth McCann in 2018 cleared the three officers of criminal wrongdoing, but urged the department to review whether the cops violated department policy.

Venzor-Gonzalez was arrested five months after his escape and later sentenced to a total of 36 years in prison for escape and attempted murder.