By Lauren Penington
The Denver Post
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Fort Collins officers fired the first shot in July’s deadly shootout between police and an armed suspect near City Park after the man pointed a rifle in their direction, according to body-worn camera footage released Wednesday.
“He’s pointing his rifle right at us,” an officer can be heard saying in the video footage seconds before the first gunshot rings out. “Is that him or you?”
“Me,” the second officer replied.
In the body-worn camera footage, gunfire echoed down the otherwise quiet Fort Collins street and through Grandview Cemetery as officers and the suspect — later identified as 42-year-old Clayton Pierce — shot back and forth at each other.
As the first two responding officers took shelter behind their police car during the gunfight, one was shot in the arm and Pierce fled into the cemetery, the video shows.
On July 21, officers initially responded to reports of a single-vehicle rollover crash at the intersection of West Mountain Avenue and South Bryan Avenue near Grandview Cemetery.
Bystanders initially tried to help the driver, Pierce, and make sure he was alive but fled when the man grabbed a rifle, according to an audio recording of the 911 call released Wednesday.
“I left the scene because the guy got out of the car and has a very large gun,” the caller told dispatchers. “All of us ran away, I ran back to my house. … It’s like a big rifle or something.”
Police said Pierce left the scene of the crash with two “ghost guns,” or guns without serial numbers, which are illegal to own, sell or create. He was armed with an “AR-style” rifle and handgun.
Law enforcement — including Fort Collins police officers, a Larimer County sheriff’s deputy and a University of Colorado Boulder police officer — later found Peirce hiding in the Grandview Cemetery and shot him when he raised his rifle.
Pierce was handcuffed and taken to the hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
At the time of Pierce’s death, Fort Collins police had just identified him as a suspect in a 2019 cold-case homicide and were “in the process of formalizing charges” against him.
In an August decision letter, Eighth Judicial District Attorney Gordon McLaughlin ruled that the four officers who shot Pierce were legally justified in their use of deadly force “to defend themselves, other officers and the public at large.”
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