A truck stolen out of Denver ended its run early Tuesday morning stuck in a church garden bed in Aurora, after passing through a covered pergola and barely missing two officers who rushed in to make the arrest. Patrol officers spotted the vehicle near East Colfax Avenue and North Havana Street and tried to pull it over, only to watch the driver speed off into a chase that ended with the truck high-centered on a raised garden bed.
According to the Aurora Police Dept
, the truck had been reported stolen from Denver just a few days earlier. When officers moved in near Colfax and Havana in the early morning hours, the suspects sped away before a traffic stop could even begin, kicking off a pursuit that wound through a church parking lot on Del Mar Circle. The vehicle then plowed through the church's garden area and straight through a covered pergola before finally grinding to a halt, high-centered on a raised garden bed it couldn't climb out of.
Officers Deploy Stop Sticks as Truck Nearly Hits Them
As the chase unfolded, the suspect vehicle nearly struck two responding officers, the department said. Aurora police successfully deployed stop sticks during the pursuit, but the suspects continued driving. The truck finally stopped high-centered on a raised garden bed. Officers then pulled both occupants from the vehicle and took them into custody without further incident.
A search of the truck turned up two firearms inside, including one handgun that had itself been reported stolen. Police described the recovery as pulling another stolen gun off Aurora's streets. Both occupants are now facing probable-cause charges that include motor vehicle theft, attempted vehicular homicide, felony eluding, possession of a weapon by a previous felony offender, and theft, according to the department's account of the incident.
A Pattern of Stolen-Vehicle Chases Near Colfax and Havana
This is not the first high-speed pursuit tied to a stolen vehicle in the same stretch of Aurora this year. In August, a license plate camera flagged a Cadillac Escalade reported stolen from Denver driving through Aurora, and the chase that followed reached speeds near 100 mph, according to KDVR. That driver avoided stop sticks, made a U-turn, and swerved into oncoming traffic on Colfax Avenue before the pursuit eventually ended in a field, with two suspects taken into custody after Aurora police and the Colorado State Patrol coordinated the stop.
A separate account of what appears to be the same August incident, reported by the Denver Gazette, described the driver avoiding stop sticks near East Colfax Avenue, making a U-turn through a grassy median, and then driving the wrong way onto Interstate 70 at speeds exceeding 100 mph. Aurora officers stopped their pursuit at that point, and Colorado State Patrol tracked the car from the air until it was stopped near West 48th Avenue and Pecos Street in Denver, where two people were arrested.
Residents and Shop Owners Describe Ongoing Trouble
The Colfax and Havana corridor has drawn attention for persistent crime concerns. A CBS Colorado report found that crime has continued at a shopping area in that part of Aurora, with one person telling the station that a Walmart in the area closed amid the trouble and that, in that person's words, “Thieves and criminals since then have essentially just moved down the street to a Target.”
The Aurora Police Department, which posts under the handle aurorapd, said the outcome reflected teamwork and the tools officers had on hand to keep people safe and apprehend the suspects, framing the arrests as part of its broader commitment to a safer Aurora.
