
A Lakewood Animal Control Officers remove a dog from the house, Friday November 09, 2012, where a police officer was killed early this morning after three suspects were arrested at a Lakewood home a few blocks west of Sloan's Lake, authorities say. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

 Alia Brown and her husband were trapped for hours in their apartment as gunfire exploded all around them.

"It was very scary. I saw flashes coming from next door. It was traumatic to not be able to leave that apartment," said Brown, 32, who lives next door to 1940 Eaton St. where gunfire erupted through the early morning hours today and a Lakewood police officer was killed.

Brown said she and her husband were on the Internet at about 2 a.m. when her husband heard the first volley of two or three gunshots. She couldn't hear anything because she had her earplugs on.

The couple went to their living room window and looked outside, just south of their apartment to the home that had been the center of a recent neighborhood feud over barking pitbulls.

1900 block of Eaton Street, Lakewood

Neighbors had filed disturbance reports because the pitbulls would bark at all hours of the night, Brown said. Whenever anyone in her apartment complex would open a window, the dogs would bark and bark, she said.

"There had been confrontations over that dog," Brown said. "There had been some weirdness between a man in our building and that neighbor. This dog was barking all the time. It was a big dog; not a yappy dog."

About 2:15 Friday morning the second volley of gunshots erupted. There were about three shots and they were close. Brown and her husband didn't feel safe and ran into their bedroom on the opposite side of the building.

"It sounded like it was right there," she said.


A helicopter began circling overhead, Brown said. A policeman came to their door and told them to keep their apartment lights turned off and stay away from the windows so their shadows couldn't be seen. It was terrifying, Brown said. She heard breaking glass and a noise that sounded like someone dragging a tarp across the ground.

About an hour after the last volley of shots, another gunshot was fired.

"That stuff was literally going on right outside our window. They just sounded so close," Brown said. "I actually saw the flash from the gun. It lit up our whole bedroom. We dropped to the floor."

They then heard a loud voice.

"Game over. Game over. The game is over," someone yelled, according to Brown.

Brown and her husband got up off the floor of their bedroom and looked out their window. Police were all around their apartment. Many officers were in the driveway of their neighbor's house. There was an ambulance just parked on the street, not moving. It made her think that whoever was shot was more than just injured.

They overheard one officer saying that someone had been shot in the leg and that someone else had gotten away, she said.

But it wasn't over yet.

At about 3:30 a.m., three more shots rang out, Brown said.

Then she said she could hear the dogs barking loudly.

By 4:30 a.m., police knocked on their door.

They searched the walls of their apartment for bullet holes. They then told Brown and her husband that they had to leave while police investigated the area.
