Aurora investigators said 11 suspected Tren de Aragua gang members and associates will face multiple felony charges in Colorado court after a couple living in the Edge of Lowry apartments was kidnapped and tortured last week.
Eight suspects are in custody and in the process of being charged while three are still on the run, Aurora police Chief Todd Chamberlain said in a Friday news conference.
One of the men in custody was already wanted on an active felony warrant for burglary and menacing after a video went viral of him and other heavily armed men knocking on doors throughout an Edge of Lowry building in August, minutes before a fatal shooting in the 1200 block of Dallas Street.
Chamberlain said the man came out in disguise, wearing a woman’s wig and clothes, when police were searching the building.
“These individuals took two people into custody against their will, they tortured them, they mistreated them for hours and hours, they stabbed them, they beat them profusely,” Chamberlain said.
The Aurora Police Department is working with the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify suspects and their connection to the Venezuelan prison gang, which has been known to operate at Edge of Lowry, Chamberlain said.
During the investigation, police discovered that the suspected gang members were extorting and taxing the kidnapped pair long before last week’s home invasion, Chamberlain said. He said the gang was forcing the couple to pay $500 every two weeks on top of their rent.
Police are working to determine if other building residents have been extorted in similar ways, Chamberlain said.
Aurora investigators originally detained 19 people from the apartment complex for questioning in the kidnapping investigation. While 16 remain in federal custody on immigration violations, Chamberlain said only half that group faces state charges.
All 16 are undocumented Venezuelan immigrants and are suspected of being members or associates of the Venezuelan prison gang, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson said in a statement.
Chamberlain said he believes several of the eight suspects are confirmed Tren de Aragua gang members but was unable to give a specific number during the news conference.
The three people who were released and the two victims are also undocumented but are not a part of ICE’s investigation, Chamberlain said.
Chamberlain said Aurora investigators are in the process of filing arrest warrants for the 11 suspects, including the three officers are still searching for. He said the group faces various felony charges including second-degree kidnapping, aggravated robbery, first-degree assault, extortion and burglary.
Last week’s violent home invasion and kidnapping stemmed from a cell phone video of two women fighting outside the apartment complex that one of the victims took and posted online, according to Chamberlain.
That video showed “a number of other individuals in and around that apartment complex that were involved in criminal activity,” Chamberlain said in the news conference. The suspects wanted her phone so they could delete the video.
After the video was posted online, the victim who took the video and her husband were accosted by more than a dozen suspects in the Edge of Lowry’s courtyard and parking lot area and taken to a vacant unit, Chamberlain said Friday. Police originally reported that the two were taken from inside their apartment.
While the pair were being tortured in the vacant apartment unit, Chamberlain said the group of suspects went back to the couple’s apartment and robbed them, taking items including jewelry and cell phones. The suspects also made the victims surrender banking information and other details about their finances.
Chamberlain said at least one of the suspects took the woman’s phone with the original video, changed its number and destroyed the evidence.
“It is a challenge, it is complex, it is incredibly hard, because a lot of those individuals that may or may not be victimized in there feel they cannot come forward to the police because of their immigration status,” he said.
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