NORTHERN LIGHTS | Amid growing controversy over undocumented allegations of widespread Venezuelan gang activity at several seedy apartments in northwest Aurora, police said four shooting suspects in custody have definite or probable gang ties.

The gang’s identification relates to four men arrested in July in connection with a shooting believed to be attempted murder.

Police were called to an apartment complex at 1568 Nome St. at 4:30 a.m. July 28 on reports of a shooting.

“When they arrived, they found two adult males suffering from gunshot wounds,” Aurora police spokesman Sydney Edwards said in a statement in July. “One of the male’s injuries is life-threatening and the other is serious.”

Another man was found at the scene with a broken ankle.

The next day, police said 24-year-old Jhonnarty DeJesus Pacheco-Chirinos of Aurora was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault, unlawful use of a firearm and endangering.

“We can now confirm that he is a documented member of Tren de Aragua,” police said in a social media post on Sept. 4. Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA, is a gang based in Venezuela.

Nixon Jose Azuaje-Perez, 19, and Dixon J. Azuaje-Perez, 20, both of Aurora, are each charged with tampering with evidence. Both are also suspected members of the TdA gang, police said.

Also arrested was Jhonardy Pacheco-Chirino, 22, also known as “Cookie” or “Galleta,” of Aurora. Police previously said criminal cases were pending against Pacheco-Chirino.

“After working with our local, state and federal partners, we can now share these gang affiliations,” police said Wednesday evening. “Both Jhonnarty and Jhonardy remain in ICE custody.”

For more than a week, Fox News, conservative social media influencers and some local media outlets have given voice to local lawmakers who have claimed without evidence that Aurora has been taken over by Venezuelan gangsters armed with long guns, extorting rent from tenants of low-cost apartment buildings and terrorizing the city.

Meanwhile, the mostly Venezuelan migrants living in the apartments — the target of what local police and Colorado’s governor have called an exaggeration and a total lie — say the real threat comes not from gangs but from the property owner, whom they describe as a “slumdog” who has left the complex in ruins. Residents say they also see danger in the city of Aurora’s seeming lack of interest in holding the owner and his management company accountable, and in city politicians spreading misinformation and threats against their home.

“We are afraid of your mayor, cockroaches and rats in our apartments, not gangs,” Gladis Tovav, a resident of the six-building The Edge at Lowry complex, said Tuesday through an interpreter.

About 50 tenants of apartments at East 12th Avenue and Dallas Street in Northwest Aurora held a news conference Tuesday in response to Mayor Mike Coffman’s Facebook post Friday that the city is seeking an “emergency” court order to close and clean up the complex and an undisclosed number of other properties. Coffman wrote that the Aurora City Attorney’s Office is preparing paperwork to seek an emergency order from a municipal court declaring the properties a “criminal nuisance.”

City staff said Tuesday that city officials had not actually sought such an order. Councilwoman Alison Coombs went further, saying “such an emergency order does not even exist” and noting that it takes the city months or even years to close an apartment complex.

That was the case at the 98-unit apartment complex at 1568 Nome St., which the city evacuated and closed on Aug. 13 after two years of complaints from residents, many of whom were also Venezuelans, about building code violations including leaks, mold and insect and rodent infestations that had long gone unaddressed by the building’s landlord.

The complex, known as Aspen Grove, was the site of a shooting related to the July 28 arrests.

It is owned and operated by the same interests that own and operate The Edge at Lowry. The owner claims that some of his buildings in Aurora have been taken over by members of Tren de Aragua.

Since Aspen Grove closed, the city has relocated hundreds of families.

Coffman and, to a larger extent, Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky kept telling the building owner — falsely, according to Aurora police and city staff — that the complex was closed because of TdA gang activity, when in fact it was because of repeated building code violations that residents had long complained about.

On Tuesday, a tenant at The Edge at Lowry showed reporters traps with mice, both dead and alive, taped to them as evidence of the problems. He and other residents said they had not heard of any Venezuelan gang activity at the complex, and a widely publicized Aug. 18 video of men with long and short guns surrounding an apartment door involved outsiders, not members of the Venezuelan community.

They said that, contrary to Jurinsky’s claims, none of them were extorted by gang members. Several showed their landlord rent receipts in response to the allegations.

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