Five off-duty Colorado Department of Corrections employees were involved in a 70-round shootout at a Pueblo skatepark in the middle of the night on July 10, according to the Pueblo Police Department.
Two prison employees were shot and a suspect was also wounded in the shootout, which happened around 2:40 a.m. July 10, Pueblo police spokeswoman Bianca Hicks said.
The five prison employees were hanging out after 2 a.m. in the skatepark in Pueblo’s City Park at 800 Goodnight Ave. after the group left work at a prison in the Cañon City area, Hicks said.
They were skating, throwing a football around and “doing some other activities,” she said, noting that their presence in the park violated the area’s curfew. Then, a group of five suspects pulled up and attempted a carjacking, Hicks said.
At least one suspect shot at the correctional employees during the attempted carjacking and at least one of the prison employees returned fire, Hicks said.
Investigators found 70 shell casings at the scene, she said.
“Ultimately, what we ended up having was a bit of a shootout between the two groups,” she said.
Hicks said she did not know the extent of the injuries to the two Department of Corrections employees or to the suspect who was shot. Police were alerted to the shooting when the three victims arrived at two separate local hospitals, she said.
“The victims actually ended up taking the injured suspect to the local hospital,” Hicks said.
Police have identified some of the suspects — including one adult and one juvenile — and are working to identify the other people involved in the attempted carjacking, she said. She declined to release their names publicly and cited the ongoing investigation.
The district attorney’s office will make decisions about charges in the shootout and whether the prison employees acted in self-defense, Hicks said.
A spokesman for the Colorado Department of Corrections did not return a request for more information.
The early-morning shootout happened on the same day that off-duty two staff members at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, a prison in Cañon City, were killed in a crash in Pueblo West at 1:58 a.m., according to The Cañon City Daily Record.
Investigators in that case were considering whether excessive speed and intoxication contributed to the crash, the newspaper reported.
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