The teen suspect accused of fatally shooting a 14-year-old outside Denver's Southwest Recreation Center in August has been charged as an adult.
On Aug. 8, officers with the Denver Police Department responded to the Southwest Recreation Center after receiving a report that a person appeared to have been shot in the face.
The affidavit reads that on the afternoon of the homicide, Aug. 8, a person called 911 from the 9200 block of W. Saratoga Place to report seeing a person — later identified as Aragon — who had been shot in the face behind the Southwest Recreation Center. Several minutes later, the witness said he heard what he thought was a firework, but later realized it was a gunshot.
The autopsy was performed that day, and police noticed two distinctive tattoos on Aragon's body. The autopsy also detailed his actual injuries, which included sharp force injuries, significant blunt force injuries and a gunshot wound to the scapula — his upper back — that exited through his neck, meaning he had been shot in the back. He had"pattern injuries" on his face and neck that seemed to match the tread of a shoe, according to the affidavit.
One person was described as a 15-year-old who had been reportedly threatening to shoot Aragon, or into his home — matching a threat Aragon's mother had also described to police. The person also told police that Aragon was friends with a 15-year-old who was killed on April 11, 2020, and enemies were made following the shooting.
At 12:16 p.m. that day, a detective with the Lakewood Police Department contacted the Denver Police Department. The detective, a high school resource officer at BCHS, said Aragon was"very charismatic, but often dressed and behaved as if he was a 'wanna be' gang member, although was never involved in any serious trouble at the school," the affidavit reads.
Around 2 p.m. on Aug. 11, police spoke with a woman who had been around the recreation center at the time of the shooting. She said around 1:15 p.m. that day, she was walking with her kids to a pool when she saw a young man, roughly 15 years old. He was"running, but not as if he was exercising. She thought that was strange, and all the more so given that he was wearing a jacket, possibly with a hat on, and long pants.
However, as outlined in the affidavit, police were able to glean the following information from the available SnapChat data: On Aug. 16, the bloodied shoe prints from the crime scene were confirmed as Air Force 1s, which Lopez owns. No other shoeprints were found at the scene. Denver police obtained Lopez's school schedule, but were informed that"he’d possibly disenrolled from BCHS in the past couple of days," according to the affidavit. The following day, Lopez did not show up for the first day of school.
On Aug. 30, investigators spoke with a person at BCHS, who confirmed that Lopez had sent her a SnapChat of"his bloody hand and shoe" but then he quickly deleted them, according to the affidavit.
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