Party shooter Luis Estrada sentenced to life in prison
A 22-year-old man was ordered to spend the rest of his life behind bars recently.
Luis Estrada was accused of shooting through a hotel room door after he was kicked out of a party inside the room. Four people inside the room were injured, one of them fatally.
The incident happened in October of 2021 at the Hyatt House Hotel near East Colfax Avenue and Peoria Street. Aurora Police Department officers were called to the hotel at 2 a.m.
Officers learned an argument occurred shortly Estrada and Ruben Mejia-Soto showed up at a party on the hotel's sixth floor. The two men were shoved into the hallway. Estrada responded by firing several rounds into the door, according to prosecutors with the 18th Judicial District Attorney's Office.
When police arrived, they found three people on the first floor of the hotel with gunshot wounds - a 17-year-old girl, a 22-year-old man and a 23-year-old man.
An 18-year-old man, Angel Ruiz, was found in the hotel room. He passed away later at a hospital.
While hotel surveillance did not record the actual shooting, it did show Estrada leaving the sixth-floor hallway with a gun in his hand just seconds after the shooting.
Police found ten fired shell casings and two live 9mm rounds in the hallway.
"When you consider the small size of the hotel room, how many people were inside and how many times this Defendant fired into it, it's a miracle that more of these young people were not killed," Chief Deputy District Attorney Gary Dawson stated in a press release following Estrada's conviction in January. "Angel Ruiz died in that hotel room not knowing the name of the person who fired through the door or even seeing the face of his killer.
"But the jury did."
Mejia-Soto pleaded guilty in May 2022 to Harassment and, for trying to hide the gun in the hotel parking lot, Accessory to a Crime. He was sentenced the following month to 30 days in jail, two years of probation and 77 hours of community service.
