DENVER — Nine people were wounded in a mass shooting early Tuesday in Denver in an area where basketball fans had been celebrating the Nuggets‘ first NBA title win, police said, and a suspect was taken into custody.
The shooting happened about 12:30 a.m. local time — about 3½ hours after the game — and three of the injured were in critical condition, the Denver Police Department said in a statement. The suspect, a man, was one of the six people who suffered injuries believed to be non-life-threatening.
The shooting happened about a mile from Ball Arena, where the Nuggets defeated the Miami Heat in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday night.
“As far as what led up to this altercation that resulted in the shots being fired, that’s still under investigation at this time,” police spokesperson Doug Schepman said. “It did occur in the area where we had largest gathering of folks celebrating during the night.”
A small crowd was in the area at the time of the shooting, he said, but had “diminished quite a bit at that point.” He said the shooting was in an area where a lot of people might have come out of bars after the game.
Police were interviewing witnesses, and Schepman described the ongoing investigation as “expansive.”