A woman is recovering in a hospital in Colorado after she was wounded in what police suspect was a targeted shooting.
At around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, Adriana Lavin and others were working up a sweat in a Zumba class in a studio located in a strip mall in Arvada, Colorado, in the outskirts of Denver. Suddenly, the class was brought to a halt when two bullets struck a studio window.
“Everyone’s reaction was to drop to the floor,” Lavin later recalled. “My reaction was to grab a child that was in my club.”
Lavin soon learned that she had another problem. “At the moment I wanted to, I couldn’t, because I fell,” Lavin, who speaks Spanish, stated through an interpreter. “I was bleeding from my legs.”
It turns out, one of the bullets had struck Lavin and nearly killed her. “[T]he bullet landed very close to a main artery,” Lavin claimed, “and it can’t get taken out without causing more damage.”
First responders who arrived at the scene recognized immediately that Lavin was in danger and put a tourniquet on her legs to staunch some of the bleeding. “I was bleeding a lot,” Lavin remembered.
Investigators believe that the shot that struck Lavin in the leg came from the gun of a man located in a mobile home park across the street from the strip mall. The suspect, later identified as 37-year-old Diego Sanchez, had allegedly aimed at a vehicle located in the mobile home park but wound up striking several establishments in the shopping center, including the fitness studio, as well as another vehicle which was then turning into the shopping center parking lot. Whether any bullets ever struck the intended target is unclear.
Sanchez turned himself into the authorities on Saturday and was charged with several violent crimes, though details regarding those crimes are unclear. The Daily Mail reported on Sunday morning that, among other crimes, he had been charged with “criminal attempted first-degree murder.” However, jail records state that Sanchez is actually facing a charge of “2nd DEG MURDER HOMICIDE ALL OTHER,” suggesting that the shooting may have been fatal. Jail records also state that Sanchez faces first-degree assault and illegal discharge of a firearm charges. He is scheduled to appear in court again on Monday.
Meanwhile, Lavin remains in the hospital. Her brother, Abraham, claimed that the shooting has been very difficult on him, on his sister, and on their entire family. “It was very hard not knowing what was going on with my sister,” Abraham said. “And I mean honestly, it’s something that I don’t wish anybody, to put them through it.”
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