Two Venezuelans were kidnapped Monday night from their Aurora apartment and then bound, pistol-whipped and tortured for hours before being released, the Aurora police said on Tuesday.

Police suspect the Venezuelan prison gang known as Tren de Aragua, or TdA, was involved in the armed invasion of a unit at The Edge at Lowry, one of three troubled apartment complexes that the owners have claimed were taken over by the gang.

The incident — which involved a male and female victim — also included a stabbing.

“It’s 100% gang related,” said Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain. 

Chamberlain added: “We’re not going to tolerate it.” 

Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky, who attended the press conference Tuesday, said gang members had ripped out the woman’s fingernails.

“So, while, yes, we’ve always had gang issues in Aurora, it’s not often we hear stories like this,” Jurinsky said. “This is a transnational gang unlike we have ever seen before. The Aurora police officers have made it clear that they are more dangerous, more violent and more organized than MS-13, and this is what we’re dealing with.”

Jurinsky has played a key role in bringing the gang’s activities in Aurora to light.

Mara Salvatrucha — commonly known as MS-13 — is perhaps the most notorious street gang in the West. While the gang originated in the 1980s in Los Angeles’ poor refugee neighborhoods, it now has tentacles that stretch from Central America to Europe.

Authorities would not definitively say that the people arrested are TdA members, but the police noted the victims and suspects were all Venezuelan nationals. As such, there’s a “high probability it’s TdA,” Chamberlain said.

Having boarded up one apartment complex overrun by the TdA gang and seeking to shutter a second, Chamberlain confirmed Tuesday that the city’s tactic for combating the Venezuelan gang involves shutting down CBZ’s apartment complexes.

“It’s definitely a strategy because, again, the problem is complex in that particular complex that I think it has to be broken up,” Chamberlain said.

‘Owning the problem’

Aurora Police detained 14 people in the alleged home invasion at The Edge at Lowry Apartments, one of the complexes at the center of the national storm on illegal immigration.

The owner, CBZ Management, has claimed the complex has been taken over by TdA, the Venezuelan gang.

According to the police, just before 2:30 a.m., patrol officers responded to a report of an armed home invasion involving a stabbing and kidnapping at an apartment in the 1200 block of Dallas Street.

Preliminary investigations suggested that several suspects entered an apartment occupied by two people, the police said.

The suspects moved the victims to an adjacent apartment on the property, where they were threatened and bound. An adult male sustained a non-life-threatening stab wound during the incident.

Both were hospitalized on Tuesday morning, Chamberlain said.

After promising not to go to the police, the suspects released the victims, who then called 911, according to the police. 

More than two dozen gangs are operating in the city of Aurora, Chamberlain said. The issue, he said, is not just at The Edge at Lowry.

“It’s 100% an issue,” the police chief said.

Chamberlain added: “We are not shying away from this problem, we are owning the problem.”

Shannon Peterson, a homeowner who lives near the complex, said she noticed an appreciable difference beginning two years ago with mounting trash, late-night parties and gunfire.

She fears for her safety, she said.

“We’re not in a position to move right now,” Peterson said. “We really want to see the place closed down.”

Peterson added: “It’s scary when you hear what they’re capable of.”

‘If people don’t see it, they don’t believe it’

Initially, Aurora officials downplayed — and in some instances denied — the extent of the TdA gang’s activities in their city. State officials also downplayed the gang’s presence.   

But a trove of documents obtained by The Denver Gazette showed the Aurora Police Department had been aware for at least a year, and officers had grown wary of the gang’s presence.

The Denver Gazette also learned that the international law firm Perkins Coie investigated the alleged criminal activities at Whispering Pines apartments, a 54-unit complex in Aurora, and outlined an operation that included the gang establishing a “lower-level” presence last year, which then escalated into violence and intimidation, the apparent goal of which was to turn the complex into a steady source of income.

The law firm said once the gang was entrenched at the complex, it used the units for illegal activities, including the prostitution of minors.

The gang, the law firm added, “operated in the open,” patrolled the area and “terrorized the community.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman lauded the suspects’ arrests.  

“Today’s swift and decisive action to apprehend the 14 probable gang suspects, and maybe more, demonstrates precisely why we brought the chief here and why he has my full support,” Coffman said.   

The mayor added: “We have and will continue to protect members of our community and aggressively pursue anyone who tries to victimize them no matter who they are or where they come from. As Chief Chamberlain said, Aurora, like every other major city across the country, must tackle crime — especially concentrated pockets of crime — aggressively. But as I have said repeatedly, specific bad actors and problematic properties do not reflect on this city as a whole.”

TDA gang members have been involved in a myriad of criminal activities that include drug trafficking; kidnapping; extortion; human trafficking — particularly immigrant women and girls; and, money laundering, according to authorities.

Originally a prison gang in Aragua Venezuela, TdA has recently expanded into the western hemisphere, including the Denver metro region, where local law enforcement has already arrested gang members on various charges.

City officials already boarded up one of CBZ Management’s three properties in Aurora, Aspen Grove, and they are working to shutter The Edge at Lowry.

In Aurora Municipal Court earlier this month, Aurora City Attorney Pete Schulte argued the criminal nuisance complaint against Five Dallas Partners, the limited liability company that owns five of the six buildings comprising the Edge at Lowry, justified its closure.

Five Dallas Partners is a subsidiary of CBZ Management, a Brooklyn-based company that owns 11 properties in Colorado.

The owners — according to city officials — have agreed The Edge should be closed, as they did with Aspen Grove, a 99-unit complex on Nome Street. The closure of Aspen Grove left about 300 people, mostly immigrants, homeless.

On Tuesday, a musty stench of rotting food and decay emanated from The Edge property, which consists of 72 units in six buildings built in the 1970s. Located near Lowry Park, the property is littered with unregistered vehicles and trash, as well as broken and boarded-up windows.

The TdA gang’s operation in Colorado’s third-most populous city has nabbed national headlines, with President-elect Donald Trump promising to conduct a mass deportation effort, beginning with a crackdown on the gang members in Aurora. 

“This is our most pressing issue,” said Stephen Elkins, a member of the Mabry Safety Collective.

Formed over the summer, the Mabry Safety Collective is a neighborhood group that seeks to address the city’s safety issues in northwest Aurora, with The Edge as a focus.

“Unfortunately in 2024, we live in a time where if people don’t see it, they don’t believe it,” Elkins said.