Dozens of protesters disrupted Aurora’s council meeting on Monday, pressing officials to charge a police officer who shot and killed a man wanted for attempted homicide last May.

The protesters said they want Aurora authorities to fire SWAT Ofc. Michael Dieck and charge him for murder over the shooting of Kilyn Lewis. Officers from Denver and Aurora had been following Lewis for days in an attempt to arrest him in connection with an homicide, in which Lewis allegedly shot a 63-year-old man multiple times. 

At the council meeting, the protesters repeatedly chanted, “Say his name, Kilyn Lewis! Justice for Kilyn Lewis!”

Aurora’s City Council meeting went into recess multiple times — with Mayor Mike Coffman leaving the room at one point — as the protesters, who included several of Lewis’s family members, took turns at the podium to denounce the shooting. They also refused to let the council end the public hearing until everyone had spoken.

In what appeared to be a well-coordinated action, many took the podium with their hands up above their heads and phones in their left hands, mimicking the position Lewis was in when he was shot, as shown by body camera footage released by the department recently. 

Video footage of the incident showed Lewis rummaging through the trunk of the vehicle. He did not appear to see two vehicles carrying the arresting officers pull up behind him. Officers yelled for him to “get on the ground,” and he started to walk along the driver’s side of the car toward the front, the videos showed. At first, the videos showed, his hands were in plain view and they were empty. But when Lewis faced the oncoming police, he did not appear to comply with the order, the videos showed. 

Providing a narration to the video footage, Interim Chief of Police Heather Morris said Lewis put his left hand into his pants’ pocket and then took a cellphone out of his back pocket with his right hand. She said that, as he reached for the cell phone, he had his right hand “behind his back, out of view.” And when his hand “came back into view, he was holding an object,” the police said, adding that, at that point, an officer fired a shot.  

Normally, members of the public invited to be heard are given one hour at the beginning of each meeting, with the possibility of being extended if the council votes to approve an extension. The council did so Monday night in an attempt to keep the meeting going after it was recessed for a second time as chants from the crowd continued.

Councilmember Alison Coombs requested the council give more time to the speakers. When the council voted not to extend the time, the crowd broke into chants.

The chants resulted in a council recess and a second vote to extend the time for the people who had signed up but didn’t have time to speak.

At the end of the council meeting, Councilmember Stephanie Hancock, whom several of the public speakers accused of supporting the police and not the protesters, criticized the protest.

Giving the public the opportunity to voice their feelings is important, she said.

But there is “an appropriate way and a respectful way to do that,” she added. 

“I also think that when people come to public invited to be heard, that they should actually have some facts to back up the things that they say,” she said. “I think it divides us and diminishes the power of the point when people resort to name calling, cursing, screaming, making up stories, and outright lying.”

Former Denver Public Schools board member Auon’tai Anderson was one of the speakers at Monday’s meeting. Like the others, he, too, walked down from his seat to the podium with his hands in the air and a phone in his hand. 

“The amount that it took me to walk from those stairs down to here, an unarmed Black man in your city lost his life to your Aurora Police Department,” Anderson said. 

The incident from the time two SWAT teams advance from their vehicles to the single gunshot took less than 10 seconds, the videos showed. 

A former member of the Denver Public Schools board, Anderson had been at the center of many of the controversies at DPS — from the return of armed police to campuses to the alleged seclusion room at McAuliffe International School.

When the school board for months endured withering public criticism for a series of missteps that included school closures, failure to protect students and administrators from gun violence and the termination of McAuliffe’s popular principal, Anderson was often the most visible member in these controversies.

Notably, Anderson co-authored the 2020 policy that kicked out cops from campuses and then, amid public pressure last year, changed his mind. Anderson played a key role in crafting the policy that returned school resource officers to the city’s schools in a closed-door meeting they held a day after a student shot and wounded two deans at East High School.

At Aurora’s council meeting, Anderson compared Lewis’ shooting to the Aurora theater shooting in 2012, during which 24-year-old shooter James Holmes opened fire in a crowded movie theater, killing 12 people and getting life in prison without parole.

Anderson’s point is that the police apprehended Holmes, who is White, without killing him, but did not safely apprehend Lewis, who was Black and not armed. 

“James Holmes gets to sit in a cell for the rest of his life … but Kilyn Lewis pulls out a phone and his life is over,” he said. “There is some bias in the Aurora Police Department.”

Another speaker, Mikey Pavone, said it doesn’t matter if Lewis committed “cold, hard murder” — he still deserved his chance in court like any other person.

“Kilyn Lewis didn’t get to see his chance in court, he didn’t get a chance at all,” she said. 

Morris earlier said that the police sought Lewis in connection with a May 5 attempted homicide, which happened at East 48th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard.

“According to the warrant, Lewis shot a 63-year-old man multiple times who was walking in the area,” Morris said in a video statement. “Thankfully, the victim survived.”

The police chief said SWAT members were requested to assist in Lewis’ arrest because of the “high-risk nature of the warrant.”    

The SWAT team members attempted to save his life at the scene. Lewis died two days later at a nearby hospital.

The video showed Dieck shooting Lewis as he reached for a black cellphone and started to raise his hands. Dieck, a 12-year-veteran of the force and eight-year Aurora SWAT team member, has been placed on administrative leave.

Denver Gazette reporters Sage Kelley and Carol McKinley contributed to this report.