AURORA, Colorado — A video from last summer showed armed members of a Venezuelan gang breaking into an apartment in Colorado. The complex is set to close in about a month because of an emergency court order, city officials said Monday.
The city of Aurora had tried to make all but one of the buildings at the complex a public nuisance. Last week, officials asked a judge to temporarily close the property, saying that things had “broken point” after two residents were violently raped and slain last month.
The city got what it asked for on Friday, before its court meeting on Monday.
Lawyers for the property owner, CBZ Management, disagree with what the city says and have asked for a trial to decide the case. Meanwhile, the building will still be closed, Aurora City Attorney Pete Schulte said at a news conference after the hearing. This is because the case is still being heard in court.
Stan Garnett, the owner of the land, has a lawyer who said he wasn’t allowed to say anything about the order.
While CBZ Management has said in the past that it couldn’t maintain the complex because the buildings were taken over by the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, the city has said that the company caused the problem by stopping to run the buildings, which left a void that allowed crime to grow.
Chief of Police for Aurora, Todd Chamberlain, supported the shutdown. He said in court that the complex had become a crime hub because of a “criminal element that has exerted control and fear” over residents.
After the meeting, Chamberlain said he thought Tren de Aragua members were part of the problem. He pointed out that seven of the suspects in the kidnapping and assault are members of the gang. But Chamberlain said that gang members had not taken over the complex. He also said that the biggest problem was that the property owners were not managing or keeping an eye on things.
The city said it was working with the nearby county and others to help people who live in 52 affected homes find new places to live.
President-elect Donald Trump was interested in the video of the armed men at the property from August while he was running for president. Trump announced a plan to go after migrant gangs at a gathering in Aurora, Colorado, in September. It was called “Operation Aurora.”
A video from August showed six guys. Since then, four of them have been arrested by Aurora police.
When the tape first came out, some people thought it might have shown members of a gang.
It wasn’t until December that the authorities confirmed a link when they said that two suspects from the video who were caught in New York were members of Tren de Aragua.
Colorado court records say that the gun seen in the video was used in a shooting outside the apartment complex 10 minutes later that killed someone. An arrest warrant says it was found in one of the flats, taken apart in an oven.
Because it is owned by a different part of CMZ, the city did not try to shut down the sixth building in the complex. The mortgage lender who is making changes to the building has asked a court-appointed official to take care of it, and that’s what they are doing.
Leave a Comment