Jurors found a former Aurora police officer not guilty of first-degree assault for an on-duty police shooting two years ago and failed to reach a verdict on a second-degree assault charge.
Douglas Harroun, 34, faced two counts of felony assault over the December 2022 police shooting. Jurors delivered the verdict Wednesday afternoon after beginning deliberations Tuesday, acquitting the officer of the most serious charge.
Prosecutors plan to re-try Harroun on the second-degree assault charge, a lower-level felony, and a new jury trial has been set for Jan. 21, said Eric Ross, spokesman for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
Harroun shot Duvan Jamir Fernandez Zuluaga while responding to a domestic violence call at a home on North Chambers Road on Dec. 31, 2022. Investigators later found the officer had no justification for the shooting and lied about what happened.
That night, Harroun and another Aurora police officer responded around 11:30 p.m. after one of Zuluaga’s housemates called 911 to report that her husband was drunk and harassing her. Zuluaga, the husband and another man were hanging out in the home’s basement apartment when officers arrived, while the wife was in a separate unit upstairs.
She told officers that her husband was not being violent and did not have any weapons.
Harroun and another officer approached the basement door and ordered the husband to come out, according to an affidavit filed against Harroun. When the husband refused, the two officers drew their guns and entered the basement. They ordered the three men to put their hands up, and each of them did so.
Harroun then grabbed the husband and handcuffed him after a brief struggle. Harroun began to pull the man up the basement stairs as his wife screamed in protest and the man used his body weight to lean against the officer, pulling him down the stairs.
As Harroun struggled to pull the husband up the stairs, Zuluaga started to follow the pair. Harroun yelled at him to stop and back up, according to the affidavit. Zuluaga, who speaks very little English, took an additional step or two forward. Harroun then shot him in the ankle.
An investigator who reviewed the body-worn camera footage from that night found Zuluaga made no “aggressive posturing, mannerisms or movements that would justify” the shooting, according to the affidavit. Right after the gunshot, Harroun claimed that Zuluaga had “rushed” up the stairs at him, body-camera footage showed. Investigators found that claim to be false.
Zuluaga sued over the shooting in June; that lawsuit is still pending.
Harroun resigned from the Aurora Police Department in January 2023 after a separate off-duty incident earlier that month in which he was accused of attacking a disabled woman as she was walking her dog.
He was also charged with crimes in that attack, and pleaded guilty in September to misdemeanor reckless endangerment. The victim in that case also sued, and the federal civil rights lawsuit is ongoing.
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