On Monday just after lunch in a quiet Lakewood neighborhood, home doorbell video showed an SUV drop a pair of female teenagers who began casing neighborhood mailboxes, before following a postal worker. The mail carrier was shot at, fell and managed to get away, calling 911 from a neighbor's residence. Lakewood police later shot one of the suspects whom they say pointed a hand gun at them. She later died at the hospital. The second teenager was apprehended in Frederick. With just one day off, the mail carrier was back on the neighborhood route, delivering letters and packages.
Snow, rain, heat and gloom of night was just a warm up.
Not even bullets could keep a Lakewood mail carrier from making his rounds just two days after he was robbed at gunpoint by a couple of teenaged suspects looking to cash in on people’s mail and packages.
“I was putting my son to bed in the back of the house and I heard gunshots,” said 28-year-old Ashley Cole, an artist who works from home, on her porch with a paintbrush in her hand. “They must have shot at him and missed him. I saw him laying on the ground across the street.”
The crime occurred Monday afternoon at around 1:40 p.m. in the 400 block of South Oak Street, according to Lakewood police, who responded to the mail carrier’s call for help from a neighbor’s phone.
We are currently on scene of an agent involved shooting near the corner of Alameda and Owens. Both a suspect and agent were shot. Both were taken to the hospital. Please avoid the area. pic.twitter.com/qPWc2RE6mt
— Lakewood Police Dept. (@LakewoodPDCO) March 27, 2023
The mailman has not been identified and a U.S. Postal Service official said he declined to be interviewed.
Police allege one of the female suspects fled to a nearby Grease Monkey at 10080 West Alameda Ave., where the teen "was confronted by agents and pointed her gun at them.”
Investigators said that’s when agents returned fire. Lakewood Police refer to their officers as "agents."
The suspect died hours later at the hospital and one Lakewood agent was injured but expected to survive. The second female suspect was apprehended that night in Frederick, Colorado, Lakewood police said.
Neither of the suspects’ identities have been released due to their ages. Jefferson County Court spokesperson Brionna Boatright said that because the case is still under investigation the police have not filed it with the First Judicial District Attorney's office.
Still, doorbell surveillance video from two homes which captured the drama revealed what appeared to be a calculated operation. One of those cameras faced the corner of Oak and Dakota and showed the suspects, the mail truck on its way up the road and a black Ford SUV making a U-Turn to follow it.
The owner of the footage, Frank Sagan, said the teens were dropped off in his quiet suburban area by someone who was driving the SUV.
“They were casing the neighborhood. It seems like such a silly thing to do,” said Sagan, who provided the video to The Denver Gazette.
It showed two people in black hoodies walking back and forth, arguing with the driver of the SUV, getting in and out, and walking with what Sagan thinks was a backpack stuffed with packages. In one clip, a suspect has a package in her arms.
The SUV driver has not been apprehended.
Cole didn't need video for what she saw with her own eyes.
One of the suspects ran past her house and she described the teen having pink hair. Surveillance video from a second home she has seen, but which was not shared with The Denver Gazette, showed the girls grabbing mail from a mailbox and opening envelopes as they walked, she said.
Sagan bought his blue Victorian home half-a-century ago when Oak Street was still a dirt road. Monday’s incident was scary for neighbors who have never experienced an order to shelter-in-place, nor heard buzzing police helicopters keeping watch overhead.
“It’s mind-blowing,” Sagan said. “I’m just gobs-smacked by the whole thing.”
Wednesday, the only reminder of Monday’s excitement in the charming old neighborhood was a ribbon of yellow crime scene tape still tied around a couple of mailboxes.
But the mail had been delivered right on time by the resilient mail carrier who had a job to do.
This story may be updated as more information becomes available.
