JOHNNY HURLEY OF TEN THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT HE WOULD DO IF HE HEARD GUN SHOTS.
He discussed it with his friends, his sister, and his partner. But it wasn’t just idle talk. By summer 2021, the longtime chef had spent nearly a year training for the possibility—working with former military personnel, learning the intricacies of his Springfield Hellcat handgun. The 40-year-old carried a gun with him nearly everywhere he went. At some point, he was certain, his time for action would come.
On June 21, 2021, shotgun blasts echoed through Olde Town Arvada around 1:30 p.m. It was a warm Monday, and as on most summer days, the Denver suburb’s quaint commercial district was buzzing with activity. Friends took lunch together on patios; coworkers met over coffees near the town square; and children played in the water fountains. Now, the afternoon had given way to chaos. People ran, ducked under bistro tables, and dove for cover behind parked vehicles.
An Arvada police officer collapsed onto a sidewalk at the far end of the square, near the intersection of an alleyway and a parking lot adjacent to Olde Town’s library. The assailant—a heavyset man in a black T-shirt, black shorts, a black fisherman-style bucket hat, and a black face mask—turned away from the lifeless body of Officer Gordon Beesley, then fired again, this time shattering the rear window of a parked police SUV. The man casually walked away, through a nearby parking lot to where an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle was resting inside his Ford F-150.
Officer Kraig Brownlow and two colleagues from the Arvada Police Department heard the shots from inside a one-story, unmarked police building about 30 yards from where the downed officer lay. Brownlow—a veteran of the Arvada force—and the others were there as part of a team assigned to work within Olde Town, in part to act as community liaisons between business owners and the district’s growing homeless population. Each shotgun blast sounded like a fist pounding against the building’s back door.
“What the fuck was that?” one of the officers said, according to a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office report. The officers rushed to look out a window in a metal door at the back of the building. They saw a man in a black T-shirt and bucket hat holding a weapon as he walked through the parking lot. “Holy shit,” one of the officers said.
Johnny Hurley heard the gunshots, too. He was shopping at Arvada Army Navy Surplus, less than a football field’s distance from where Beesley had been shot and killed. Hurley had been shopping for new work boots and wanted to purchase a fishing license, but now he was looking out the storefront window and saw the assailant walking away. “He has a gun!” Hurley said, pointing to the man in the distance.
Dressed in a red T-shirt, brown pants, and a red baseball cap he wore backward, Hurley ran out the store’s front door. He pulled his Hellcat out of its holster, dashed toward the town square, and crouched behind a brick wall. He asked a bystander if he knew where the shooter had gone; the bystander shrugged and pointed in the general direction of the assailant’s path. Hurley peered around the barrier and saw the man in black walking toward him, through the parking lot. The man was carrying an AR-15 in his right hand. Hurley ducked back for a moment, then steadied himself as the gunman drew closer. Hurley stepped out, aimed, and fired six times.
Meanwhile, Brownlow stayed at the back-door window while the other officers took up different positions inside the building. A figure appeared in Brownlow’s field of vision. The officer did a quick assessment. The man Brownlow asked himself, according to a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office report.
