Aderagaw Teklehaimanot, a 48-year-old Black man, spent his last day at a small business on Denver’s busy East Colfax Avenue, an address that sits in a stretch of modest retail storefronts and apartments at 6622 East Colfax. On the evening of December 20, 2010, that ordinary setting became the scene of a sudden, violent robbery. Denver police were called to the location on a report of an aggravated robbery in progress, a type of crime that had already made many business owners along that
corridor wary of closing-time dangers.
When officers arrived, they found Teklehaimanot inside the business with a fatal gunshot wound. Investigators would later determine that during the robbery he had struggled with the intruders, a desperate attempt to resist or protect the establishment that ended with him being shot. The robbers tore the store’s cash register free and fled into the night, carrying it away in their hands as they escaped the scene, leaving behind a shattered business and a mortally wounded victim.
News of the killing rippled quickly through the East Colfax neighborhood. The murder of a man known, according to later cold-case summaries, as a hardworking figure in the community added a sense of personal loss to the crime statistics that year. Residents and nearby shopkeepers were left to confront the reality that even a familiar corner business could be turned into a crime scene in a matter of moments. The memory of that night lingered in the area, becoming one of the unsolved tragedies often recalled when people spoke about safety along that stretch of Colfax.
Detectives from the Denver Police Department opened a homicide investigation and documented the case under agency number 2010-626595. Despite canvassing for information and preserving the case in the city and state cold case files, the people responsible for Teklehaimanot’s death have never been publicly identified. Official records from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and Denver’s own cold case materials emphasize that the suspects in the robbery-turned-homicide remain unknown and that no one has been charged with the crime.
Over the years, the case has been highlighted repeatedly in cold case listings and community-focused crime resources, each reminder stressing both the brutality of the killing and the absence of closure. Authorities have maintained a reward of up to $2,000 for information leading to an arrest, urging anyone with knowledge of the robbers who carried off the cash register and left Aderagaw Teklehaimanot dead on the floor of that East Colfax business to finally come forward. As of the most recent updates, however, there have been no reported arrests and no confirmed suspects, leaving his homicide an open wound in Denver’s unsolved case files.
