Damien Terrazas remembers how his mother’s face puffed up the first time her boyfriend hit her. She tried to joke about it, telling Terrazas she looked like a wild cat.
Her boyfriend, James Sanchez, apologized and hugged her and said he felt so bad, said he wanted to go to church to seek forgiveness, and then went, Terrazas said. But a few weeks later, Terrazas found photos on a cellphone of his mother’s face, beaten up. At first she said she’d fallen into a table. Then she admitted Sanchez hit her again, he said.
She said she’d leave him, but her father was dying and she was struggling with addiction, and sometimes Sanchez was kind. A few days after Christmas 2023, her boyfriend broke her nose in the middle of the night, went to jail, bonded out, came back, Terrazas said. Sanchez ignored the court’s protection order that said he couldn’t be at their house.
And then, on March 2, the day after her father’s funeral, Desiree Terrazas was shot to death a block from the family’s Denver home. Sanchez was charged with first-degree murder. (He has pleaded not guilty to killing her, as well as to separate assault charges connected to the Christmas incident.)
Police later found a notebook labeled with the name “James,” in which someone wrote that they’d violated a protection order and were going to jail and, “That is why I did it.”
“This is Desiree’s fault,” the note read.
Desiree Terrazas died just four months after the first blow, her son said. She was fierce, intense and a jack of all trades, he said. She once built a table for their dining room, carefully sanding and staining. She was beautiful and blunt. Her funeral was packed.
“There were so many people there,” said Damien Terrazas, 18. “I’m like, ‘My mom was loved — and she didn’t feel like it.’ ”
His mother’s death was part of what Denver police Chief Ron Thomas calls a “disturbing” jump in domestic violence in the city in 2024 that came even as homicides and non-fatal shootings significantly declined.
Homicides plunged 17% in Denver last year, dropping to 69 killings in 2024 from 84 in 2023 and nearing a low not seen in the city since 2019, before crime surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Non-fatal shootings dropped almost 10% last year, with 55 fewer people shot in 2024 than the year prior.
Within that drop, domestic violence homicides and assaults increased: 12 people were killed in domestic violence incidents in 2024, a higher percentage of overall victims than in any other year since at least 2019. Domestic violence assaults surged 44% in 2024 compared to 2023, police data shows.
The increase in domestic violence bucks a broader trend of declining and flat crime: Denver’s violent crime — sex assaults, robberies, murders and aggravated assaults — stayed almost flat in 2024, with a quarter of a percent increase over the prior year. Property crime was down 17%, driven by large year-over-year drops in the number of stolen cars and thefts from vehicles, police records show.
“I’m happy to see that just about every significant crime category was down,” Thomas said. “We do see the things that are up, and we’re not going to just shrug our shoulders. We’re going to see if there are things that we can do to impact that.”
The city in 2024 saw an uptick in thefts (up 10% from 2023), simple assaults (up 15%) and drug- and alcohol-related crimes (up 18%), the data shows.
There’s a lingering perception that Denver is unsafe, Thomas said, even as homicides and shootings decline.
The police department wants to change that perception, and will increase its focus on petty thefts and drug- and alcohol-related crimes in 2025 to try to do so, Thomas said.
“If you see people standing around on the corner, or you see just open drug use, that gives a perception that it’s just a lawless community,” he said. “That’s something we need to be much more responsive to. Even something as simple as a convenience store having to close because of repeated thefts, that can impact people’s perception of safety.
“So that’s why we’re going to renew our focus on petty theft and those kinds of things that seem to drive the perception of safety sometimes even more than violent crime (does).”
Homicides and shootings drop
The 69 homicides in Denver last year represent a 28% decrease from the recent peak of 96 homicides in 2021 and continues the downward trend seen since then — but is still above the 63 homicides the city recorded in 2019.
The city experienced a drop in homicides in which the suspect used a gun — there were 67 fatal shootings in 2023, compared to just 49 in 2024. The city also saw an increase in homicides committed with bodily force — from just two in 2023 to seven in 2024.
Non-fatal shootings declined to 203 shootings with 239 victims in 2024 from 225 shootings with 294 victims in 2023. That’s a 10% drop in shootings and 19% drop in the number of victims.
Seven of 2024’s homicide victims were children — the same number of children killed in 2023 — including a baby girl and six victims who were 16 or 17 years old, the police data shows.
Giovanni Heredia, 17, was just starting to go out more on his own when he was killed in a shooting at a Green Valley Ranch birthday party, said his mother, Jenny, who spoke on the condition she be identified only by her first name because her son’s killer has not been caught.
Giovanni was one of four people shot at a house party early on Feb. 4, caught in the crossfire of a dispute between others, police said. He wasn’t in a gang, Jenny said. He’d gone to the party because a friend’s friend was playing in a band there. He’d recently taken up guitar and was looking to start his own group.
He was the kind of kid who’d try anything, she said. He got in trouble at school just once, when he pushed a kid who was picking on another student with autism. When they went on vacation to the beach, he’d drop his luggage and run to the sand, stay by the water all day. He was quick to say, “I love you.”
His death was devastating, Jenny said. On Nov. 2, the Day of the Dead, the family cooked Giovanni’s favorite dish: fish tacos with cabbage and pico de gallo. They remembered him. Laughed, and cried. She wants to see the person responsible for his death arrested.
“It’s not fair for this person to be out on the streets, walking free,” she said.
Police made arrests in 41 of 2024’s homicides, and another 10 cases were closed through other means, like the death of a suspect or with no charges filed because the killer acted in self-defense.
Fifteen of last year’s homicide cases are still open, police records show.
Domestic violence increased
Ivanna Johnson sees the signs now that it’s too late.
Her son, 23-year-old Dylan Adams, was shot to death at an apartment complex in Denver on April 2. Police haven’t made an arrest, but they’ve classified the case as domestic violence committed by an intimate partner.
The investigation remains open. “Detectives are working to ensure sufficient evidence exists to support the filing of charges,” a Denver police spokesperson said in a statement.
Johnson said she believes her son’s girlfriend was abusive, that she shot him when he tried to leave that day. Johnson had no idea what her son was facing at the time, but she learned details from his friends afterward that made things click.
She said they told her the girlfriend shattered Adams’ phone frequently, which explained why her son’s phone was broken every few weeks. They told her she pulled his hair, which explained why he’d suddenly cut his locks.
“There was a lot of secrecy and a lot of deceit,” Johnson said. “…I know there’s a lot of shame when you talk about domestic violence, and even more so when it is at the hands of a female toward a male.”
Johnson raised her son, Dylan Montgomery Adams, to never lay hands on a woman. She picked his middle name because his great-grandmother marched with Rosa Parks, and she never wanted him to forget where he came from. He was a good kid, she said. He wasn’t in a gang, wasn’t violent.
She thought her son would have had the tools to get out of such a relationship, and she’s heartbroken that he couldn’t. He was a sensitive kid, she said.
Once when Adams was in high school, he developed a crush on a cashier at a Target store. When his stepfather suggested the way to talk to a woman was to strike up a conversation about something she was knowledgeable about, Adams came up with a plan.
The next time he was at Target, he grabbed several boxes of tampons and took them to the cashier’s line. Then he asked his crush for her opinion: which ones did she prefer, which ones did she use?
“He was so serious and so earnest,” Johnson said, adding he really thought he had game. “And we were like, ‘Bro.’ ”
She and her son visited national parks together; he loved being outside. Now, Johnson is visiting the parks by herself. She brings stones made from his ashes with her on every trip.
“I take him with me and I breathe his name to the four corners of the Earth,” she said.
Adams was one of four men killed in domestic violence incidents last year — a full third of the city’s 2024 fatal domestic violence victims, according to police data.
The growing number of domestic violence killings and assaults is “not surprising,” said Natasha Adler, director of survivor services at the nonprofit SafeHouse Denver. They’ve seen higher numbers of people seeking help since the pandemic ended.
“Domestic violence obviously isn’t caused by stressors,” she said. “It’s not caused by substance use. It is caused by people feeling entitled to use violence over their partners. But things like that can heighten the severity. … So if we are dealing with a tough political climate, housing crisis issues, lack of financial resources, things like that — the more stressors there are, the more likely it is there are going to be assaults.”
She added that SafeHouse sees an uptick in assaults around big sporting events and times of heavy alcohol use. Lately, they’ve noticed a growing number of domestic violence victims who are under the age of 25, Adler said.
The organization has ramped up its prevention and outreach in middle schools and high schools to combat that, she said.
Adler added that survivors served by the nonprofit are often frustrated and endangered when their abusers are released from jail on bail.
“In the past few years we’ve seen an increase in (personal recognizance) bonds, or low bonds,” she said. “So we are seeing a lot of those offenders getting out immediately and they often do re-offend.”
She added that many domestic violence prevention organizations lost federal funding in 2024 as a pool of grant money available through the federal Victims of Crime Act fund dramatically decreased, a move that has also impacted other victim-oriented organizations.
Colorado paid out $18.4 million in federal Victims of Crime Act funding to 181 programs specifically for work related to domestic violence in 2022. That dropped to $7.7 million across 121 programs in both 2023 and 2024, said Paula Vargas, director of strategic communications for the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.
The Blue Bench, a Denver nonprofit that serves survivors of sexual violence — which often includes domestic violence victims — was forced to cut several positions and scale back its service when it lost 35% of its Victims of Crime Act funding for 2025, said spokesperson Katie Swick.
“We are very concerned about meeting demand, especially with the rhetoric going around right now, we are trying to focus on taking in as many survivors as possible,” Swick said.
Domestic violence presents a unique challenge for policing, Thomas said. Officers will continue to work with domestic violence prevention organizations to try to head off violence before it escalates into assaults or homicides, he said.
“It’s all, obviously, very personal within the home,” he said. “There’s a reluctance to report, a reluctance to come forward. Some of those family dynamics are a little tougher to tackle than some of the challenges we identify in other people who are engaged in violent crime… It’s just more intimate, and I think a little bit more difficult to really identify what the challenge is and provide a solution.”
Denver police to focus on theft, drugs in 2025
Denver police will ramp up their focus on public drug use and theft from stores in 2025, Thomas said.
The city saw a jump in drug- and alcohol-related crime during 2024, with increased reports of illegal drug possession. Thomas attributed some of that bump to proactive policing made possible by a reduction in unhoused people in the downtown core and those who were living in large encampments.
“That increased our capacity and gave us greater opportunity to do proactive work, and really identify some of those persistent drug dealers and drug-involved individuals that are resistant to services,” he said. “…A lot of those arrests were as a result of being responsive to community concerns. You know, people saying, ‘There is a group of people standing outside my business or outside my home. I believe that they’re using or selling drugs,’ and responding to that and identifying that, in many cases yes, they were using or possessing drugs.”
He expects officers to continue to focus on such drug use going forward, with an eye on helping drug users who are ready to be helped, rather than blanket arrests.
“Obviously we don’t want to criminalize addiction,” he said. “Our main targets are those people that are preying on those individuals. It’s incumbent on our part to really identify who is who.”
Officers will also ramp up their focus on retail theft, Thomas said, and are on the lookout for ways to “make it less attractive to commit theft.” One possibility is aggregating the amounts stolen so that a higher-level charge can be brought against a serial shoplifter, Thomas said.
If a person were to steal $20 worth of goods five times, they might be charged with a single count of theft over $100, rather than five lower-level counts of theft, he said.
“I think there’s sort of the perception sometimes that (retail theft) is something that we don’t care so much about, but I think we need to make sure that (businesses) understand that we do care about it, and that we are inclined to do something about it,” Thomas said.
The police department also increased its presence on the 16th Street Mall after an attacker stabbed four people — two fatally — in unprovoked attacks in mid-January.
That will continue, Thomas said. The day after the stabbings, the police department also changed its processes so that desk officers in each district can directly access the surveillance camera feed for the mall, rather than requiring the feed be accessed through a central surveillance center, Thomas said.
“Recognizing that as numbers have gone down pretty significantly, the community doesn’t necessarily feel safe — I know sometimes it’s things like what happened on the 16th Street Mall that drive that perception,” Thomas said. “But I think it’s also some of those day-to-day things that people see, and people hear about and read about that, that impact that perception. So I think that there are things that we can do to adjust that perception.”
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