Trigger Happy: Kilyn Lewis’ Family Demands Accountability for APD’s Legacy of Lethal Force

“When I saw his eyes, I knew right then, he was already gone.”

Kilyn Lewis’s mother, LaRonda Jones, remembers seeing her son in the hospital for the first time after being shot by Aurora Police Officer Michael Dieck. 

In May of 2024, the Aurora Police Department obtained a warrant for Lewis’s arrest after connecting him to a non-fatal shooting that had taken place earlier in the month. Surveillance camera footage shows that the same color, make, and model of Lewis’s car, a red Chevrolet Monte Carlo, was involved in the shooting, and eyewitnesses accused Kilyn of being the shooter.  As is the case with all fatal officer-involved shootings, there is much debate over the original crime the victim was accused of committing and whether or not they were guilty of said crime. Lewis’s guilt or innocence was made inconsequential once Officer Dieck chose to act as judge, jury, and executioner. 

Body camera footage of Lewis’s shooting was released by the APD, which was edited with additional context and narrated by Interim Chief Heather R. Morris. However, this did little to quell the flurry of questions from Lewis’s family, the press, and the public.

The footage shows three officers rapidly approaching Lewis as he stands near his car. Initially, his hands are “visible and empty,” Morris explains in the released footage. As all three officers begin shouting conflicting demands at Lewis, he approaches his driver’s side door and reaches into his back pocket. A slowed-down segment of this moment, provided by the APD, shows that Lewis had produced his cell phone from his back pocket. Phone in hand, Lewis begins to raise his hands above his head, palms outward, and starts to lower himself to the ground. This is the moment he is shot. 

The footage continues and shows Lewis sliding to the ground against his car while screaming, “I don’t have nothing”. 

Exactly seven seconds go by between when Lewis is initially approached by officers and fatally shot. Within those seven seconds, there is a flurry of demands lodged at Lewis, including “hands” and “get on the ground”. While it is true that Lewis took those seven seconds to move away from his trunk and retrieve his phone from his pocket, we at YS believe that this choice should not have proved fatal. 

In the released video, Morris states that Lewis “did not comply with officer demands to get on the ground”, a statement Jones called “ludicrous.” 

“They did not give him time to process anything,” Jones told Yellow Scene Magazine. “He went into that kneeling position with his hands up. He was cooperating, even though [they] were shouting different commands.”

Jones is not alone in her criticisms of the framing and presentation of the footage. 9News recently won a lawsuit requiring the City of Aurora to release the full, unedited body camera footage from Kilyn Lewis’s killing, after the department had previously withheld and selectively edited it. The version released to the public omitted crucial audio, blurred key moments, and filtered the narrative through a departmental voiceover allowing the department to dodge accountability and push their own narrative unchecked. Just last year, We at Yellow Scene Magazine faced a similar situation with the City of Boulder after officials attempted to charge nearly $3,000 for footage related to the police killing of Jeanette Alatorre. The courts sided with our position. What we’re witnessing is a troubling pattern: departments leaning on legal gray areas, edited “transparency,” and excessive fees to delay or block accountability. In each case, it takes sustained pressure, from journalists, advocates, and grieving families, for the truth to come out. 9News’s win for the full body cam footage exposes one part of a bigger problem: the system’s failure to hold officers with repeated excessive force accountable. This failure is clear in the record of Dieck, the officer who fired the fatal shot.

Michael Dieck has been a member of the Aurora Office force since 2011 and has been with the SWAT unit for eight years. His time with APD has been, while standard for the department, riddled with excessive use of force. 

In 2018, Dieck fatally shot Tyrell Tyrone Jones in the back of a metro cab. Jones had been accused of shooting his partner in a domestic violence dispute, and was armed at the time APD surrounded the taxi he was fleeing in. District Attorney Dave Young found that shooting justified and ordered that no officer face criminal charges.  In 2021, three years before the shooting of Kilyn Lewis, Dieck was involved in a use-of-force incident, which resulted in charges being brought against two Aurora Police officers. A confidential tip given to the Sentinel revealed Dieck was present when an APD officer pistol-whipped a suspect who was not attempting to flee. 29-year-old Kyle Vinson was being placed under arrest by two APD officers when Dieck arrived on the scene as backup. Arrest affidavits describe body camera footage that was not released. When Dieck arrives on the scene, Vinson’s face is bruised and bloody, and he calls out for help as Dieck approaches. 

Dieck responds by tasering Vinson in the leg and warns that if he does not comply, he is going to “get it again”. 

Then-police chief, Vanessa Wilson, condemned the treatment of Vinson during a press conference, saying she was “disgusted” and that the actions of the officers involved were “not police work.”

One responding officer was charged and found guilty of failure to intervene during excessive use of force. The other officer was charged with assault and felony menacing but was acquitted later in a trial. Dieck’s actions, however, have not faced legal scrutiny. 

The Aurora Police Department has a storied history with excessive use of force and officer-involved shootings. According to reports released by APD, there were eight “lethal” use of force incidents in 2021, 13 in 2022, and four in 2023. APD defines lethal use of force incidents as any time an officer fires a gun at a suspect, regardless of the outcome.  In 2023, former APD officer Eduardo Landeros killed Elias Hans Anderson during a rollover crash. Landeros was responding to a 911 call about a possible break-in without his lights or sirens on when his vehicle struck Anderson’s. Landeros resigned the day before the internal affairs investigation was set to begin and pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide.  That same year, an officer fatally shot 14-year-old Jor’dell Richardson after the teen was accused of stealing from a smoke shop. In 2024, Aurora police officers shot 28-year-old Jose Rodriguez-Balderrama as he entered his apartment. Most infamously, Elijah McClain died while in Aurora police custody due to the chokehold that officers had him in. Most recently, on May 12th of 2025, an Aurora police officer shot and killed a trespassing suspect in a parking lot near Denver International Airport. 

Due to rising tensions between community members and a historically violent police force, the Aurora Police Department is under a consent decree from the state, part of a plea deal with the city reached in 2021. Aurora is the only police department in Colorado to have a consent decree in place. 

Though Dieck has not, and will not be charged criminally, Lewis’s family recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city. The lawsuit alleges that Dieck did not give Lewis a verbal warning that he would shoot, “nor allow sufficient time for Kilyn to comply” with what the family claims were “overlapping and conflicting commands being shouted at him.”

“No reasonable officer in Defendant Dieck’s position would have perceived Kilyn as posing an imminent threat,” the complaint states, pointing out that Dieck had been assigned a less-lethal weapon but chose to fire his gun.

Aurora officials said they could not comment on the lawsuit, which they had not yet been formally served, but continued to defend the officer’s actions. In a statement, city spokesperson Ryan Luby pointed to multiple investigations, including one by the 18th Judicial District Attorney, that deemed the shooting justified. However, Aurora’s independent monitor, as required by the consent decree, raised red flags in a report last fall. That review questioned why officers approached Lewis without cover, despite labeling the situation a “high-risk stop.” It also scrutinized Dieck’s prior involvement in other shootings, calling on the department to re-evaluate how it selects and retains SWAT officers.

The Lewis family’s legal team echoed those concerns in their filing, claiming the city had the power to prevent the shooting and failed to do so. The suit accuses Aurora of “willful and wanton” misconduct and says other, non-lethal options were available but not used.

“This lawsuit is not just about a dollar amount. It’s about truth,” said MiDian Shofner, CEO of the Epitome of Black Excellence and the family’s lead advocate. “No amount of money can bring Kilyn back, but since America has made money the metric for justice, the family is rightfully pursuing every legal remedy available.”

Shofner added that the suit is just one step in a longer effort to push for police accountability in Colorado.

The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and damages for economic and emotional losses, along with out-of-pocket expenses related to Lewis’ death.

“We’re going to let our voices be heard,” Jones told YS. “We are not quitting until [police officers] are shown that you are not above the law. You guys took an oath to protect and serve the people, the community. You are not protecting and serving the community or the people. You’re killing our Black people — people of color. Why did you take an oath that you didn’t plan to uphold?”