Just before 9 a.m. Wednesday, Aurora police officers got a hit on a stolen vehicle near E. 17th Avenue and N. Lansing Street — and it wasn't just any stolen car. The vehicle had been taken from its owner in an armed carjacking in Denver earlier that same morning.
According to a post from the Aurora Police Dept
, an officer spotted the stolen vehicle and attempted to make contact, but the driver took off, running red lights and swerving into oncoming traffic in an apparent bid to escape. Rather than continue a high-speed ground chase through residential streets, Aurora's Real Time Information Center deployed a drone to track the vehicle from above, keeping officers updated on the driver's location in real time.
The pursuit ended when the vehicle stopped near N. Vaughn Street, at which point the driver ditched the car and fled on foot. He tried to hide behind a car parked in a nearby driveway before jumping a fence and cutting through a string of backyards, but the drone stayed locked on him from overhead the entire time.
Suspect Found Hiding Behind a Bicycle
The suspect eventually crouched behind a bicycle in one of the backyards, apparently hoping to disappear from view. It didn't work — the drone spotted him from above, and officers moved in and took him into custody without incident, per the department's account.
Police identified the man as the suspect wanted in connection with the armed carjacking that had occurred in Denver earlier that morning. He was arrested on probable cause for motor vehicle theft and vehicular eluding, the Aurora Police Dept said.
Under Colorado law, a Class 5 vehicular-eluding conviction carries a minimum $2,000 fine; the felony class can rise if the offense involves injury or death, according to the Sawyer Legal Group. Motor vehicle theft itself has been prosecuted strictly as a felony since Colorado's Senate Bill 23-097 took effect in 2023, eliminating older misdemeanor thresholds tied to a vehicle's value, per the O'Malley Law Office.
A Familiar Playbook for Aurora Police
This is not the first time Aurora's drone program has replaced a ground chase with aerial tracking. Earlier in September, on September 12, officers deployed an RTIC drone during another stolen vehicle pursuit that ended when suspects abandoned the car at a Denver birthday party; two handguns were recovered from the vehicle, as Hoodline reported at the time.
The Real Time Information Center, which fuses city surveillance cameras, Flock Safety license plate readers, and drone feeds through Axon's FUSUS software, formally launched in November 2025, according to Colorado Politics. The setup gives sworn officers and analysts a live view of unfolding incidents from a centralized hub at headquarters, letting them relay overwatch to officers on the ground instead of relying solely on radio updates during a chase.
Carjackings Still Crossing City Lines
The case underscores how violent crimes that begin in Denver often spill into neighboring Aurora within hours. Reported armed carjackings in Denver totaled 102 in 2025, an average of 8.5 per month, with Gateway and Green Valley Ranch recording the highest neighborhood totals in the city, according to data from Denver Crimes. Across the last 48 months, Denver averaged 13.6 reported armed carjackings per month.
Statewide, the trend line on auto theft has been improving. Colorado Department of Public Safety data released in June showed motor vehicle thefts fell 36% statewide through May 2026 compared to the same period the year before, with the Metro Denver region seeing a 39% drop, per the Denver Gazette. Data-driven prevention tactics are among the approaches discussed for addressing auto theft.
Colorado's crackdown followed years of being the epicenter of the nation's auto theft crisis. In 2021, the state ranked worst in the country for motor vehicle theft.
