Jose Gutierrez-Peredia, 25, male, Hispanic/Latino, spent the late hours of Sunday, September 1, 2013, outside the Mariposa Apartments on West Mississippi Avenue in southwest Denver. Around 10:20 p.m., shots rang out. Officers arrived to find him gravely wounded; he was rushed from the scene and later died at the hospital. Neighbors described a confrontation at the complex that escalated suddenly, turning a familiar courtyard into a crime scene lit by patrol lights and cordoned tape.
Detectives quickly focused on a neighbor, 39-year-old Victor Baltazar. An arrest warrant for first-degree murder was issued as investigators pieced together how an argument earlier that night spiraled into gunfire just steps from where both men lived. For days, police searched while warning the public that the suspect was at large; tips were sought and his photo circulated in local media.
The trail led south of the border. According to the Denver District Attorney, Baltazar-Gonzalez fled to Mexico shortly after the killing, and for years the case hinged on international requests to bring him back. In February 2018, Mexican authorities surrendered him to U.S. Marshals in Mexico City; he was flown to Denver and booked into the city jail without bond to stand trial on the 2013 murder charge. Court officials characterized the episode as the culmination of a long extradition effort that began soon after the shooting.
What happened on that Labor Day weekend was stark in its simplicity: a dispute at an apartment complex, the crack of gunfire, and a young man’s life cut short on a warm late-summer night. Years later, the arrest overseas and extradition back to Colorado showed the investigation never went cold, even as time and distance stretched between the suspect and the city where Jose fell.
