One person died and eight others were injured early Monday morning when shots erupted in the parking lot of a southeast Denver nightclub, police said.
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Two groups fought at an unspecified event in Aurora on Sunday afternoon, a confrontation that reignited at an afterparty later that night at the Ultra Lounge nightclub, 9755 E. Hampden Ave., Denver police Chief Ron Thomas said in a news briefing.
Denver officers were already responding to the disturbance when shots were fired on the nightclub’s outdoor patio and in the parking lot, Thomas said. The shooting happened shortly before 12:10 a.m. Monday.
When officers arrived, they found a man who had been shot in the parking lot, Thomas said. Paramedics took the man to the hospital, where he died from his injuries, he said.
The man will be identified by the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner.
Eight other people were shot with “varying degrees of seriousness,” Thomas said. Some took themselves to the hospital and others were taken by paramedics. As of Monday morning, all eight were in “serious but stable” condition, Thomas said.
No weapons were recovered at the scene, but investigators believe at least two guns were fired during the incident, Thomas said.
It’s unknown if all the people injured were with the two groups who first confronted each other at the Aurora event, or if some were bystanders, Thomas said. The bar was unusually crowded for a Sunday evening, he said.
“I think one of the challenges that we face in our city, all over our city, is that there are far too many people that have access to guns and just don’t have the appropriate conflict resolution skills,” Thomas said during the briefing.
As of Monday morning, investigators were working to identify suspects in the shooting based on witness descriptions, Thomas said.
The sprawling crime scene was still taped off late Monday morning as a detective talked to witnesses who were waiting to retrieve their cars from the closed-off parking lot. Trash littered the ground.
Witnesses recounted taking cover when the gunshots rang out. One man hid under a car. A woman huddled in a closet.
John Hawkins, who lives at a nearby apartment complex, said he heard what he thought were fireworks and stepped outside to investigate.
“I came outside and I was like, that doesn’t sound like fireworks,” he said. “People were running in all directions.”
The nightclub is not routinely a problem spot, Hawkins said. He and his neighbors sometimes hear loud cars and street racing in the area, but rarely hear music from the lounge. But he noted that his neighbors have found bullet casings on the apartment complex property. He’s thinking about moving, but not because of the recent violence.
“Stuff can happen anywhere,” he said.
The nightclub sits on the edge of Denver’s Hampden and Kennedy neighborhoods, along a stretch of East Hampden Avenue that has become a hotspot for violence this year. At least five people have been killed and 11 shot in at least five incidents along a 1.5-mile stretch of the corridor so far in 2026.
In January, a 16-year-old boy and 26-year-old man were killed when a party celebrating the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro devolved into gunfire.
A double shooting in March in the 8400 block of East Hampden Avenue that killed 59-year-old Patricia Daniel and wounded a 37-year-old woman was an act of family violence inside an apartment. And in a separate incident, 47-year-old Neal Jones was beaten to death outside a nightclub in the 9700 block of East Hampden Avenue.
Thomas told The Denver Post last week that police believe both late-night entertainment establishments and a large apartment complex that serves low-income residents have contributed to the spate of violence this year, which he said have been unconnected incidents.
Police have increased patrols in the area in an attempt to head off the violence.
In 2025, the city saw two homicides in the East Hampden corridor and one non-fatal shooting during the entire year, police records show. In 2024, the corridor experienced a single non-fatal shooting.
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This is a developing story and may be updated.
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