A citizen advocacy group that opposes marijuana proliferation, Smart Colorado, warned in a statement that public 4/20 celebrations “send a clear message to the rest of the nation and the world about what Colorado looks like.”
“Does the behavior of the participants in these events reflect well on our state?” asked the head of Smart Colorado, Henny Lasley.

DENVER – Police are searching for the two suspects who fired shots during the 4/20 pot rally in Denver’s Civic Center Park on Saturday, injuring three people and causing thousands of festival-goers enjoying the jovial atmosphere festivities to flee in panic.

A man and woman, between 20 and 30 years old, were shot in the leg, Denver police tweeted. Their injuries were considered non life-threatening.

A third victim, a juvenile, was grazed by a bullet and walked into a nearby hospital, police tweeted.

A dog, belonging to one of the victims,  also appeared to have been grazed or shot and was seen limping from the scene. Several other people suffered some minor injuries from running or being trampled, according to witnesses who talked to 7NEWS.

Police asked those attending the rally for possible photo or video of the shootings, and had no immediate motive for the shooting.

“Everybody in this world has a camera nowadays, so if anybody has any pictures that might assist us, we’d like those as well,” said Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson.

AIRTRACKER7 was over the area at the time of the shooting and streamed video of thousands of people running and one man on the ground, surrounded by police officers. Several police motorcycles were parked nearby and paramedics arrived a few moments later to transport the man to Denver Health.

7NEWS reporter Russell Haythorn said he heard “four to five shots fired” at about 5:02 p.m. and the ambulances arrived while he was live in the 5 p.m. newscast.

Kyle, a witness who was next to the stage when the shots were fired, said, “lots of people had different ideas of what was happening. Some people were yelling ‘Explosion!’ some people were yelling, ‘Gunshots!’ We couldn’t really find if it was coming from the stage or from the side because there were just so many people literally just running at people.”

“We were standing in the center over there, they just started shooting,” a witness in Broncos clothing told Haythorn.

“Did you see anything?” Haythorn asked.

“I didn’t see it, but I could hear ‘boom, boom, boom,’ and I could see everybody just trampling and running,” the witness responded.

Another witness said,  “We heard somebody yell, ‘Gun!’ then a wave of people came.”

“A gush of people  just came running.  We were like, ‘Whoa.’  People were dropping stuff,” another witness added.

Cody Crouch, the camera operator aboard AIRTRACKER7, tweeted, “I saw thousands running away from the south theater area.”

“I saw him fall, grabbing his leg,” said Travis Craig, 28, who was at the celebration and witnessed the aftermath of the shooting. He said he used a belt to apply a tourniquet to the man’s leg.
“He was just screaming that he was in pain, and wanted to know where his girlfriend was. She was OK. And then the cops showed up real quick, like, less than a minute. They put him on ambulance and left.”
A large number of police officers were already at the downtown Denver park watching the marijuana rally, the first since the state legalized pot.

Denver police had said its officers were there to monitor crowd security in light of the attack at the Boston Marathon and not there to arrest anyone for public pot smoking, which is still illegal in Colorado.

Categories: news

Tags: legalizing drugs, NWO