http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/24339903/detail.htmlDENVER -- Filberto Alderete said he faced a life-or-death decision.
Suspected gang members were beating his 25-year-old grandson in the front yard and firing gunshots early Sunday morning outside his duplex near Sloan's Lake. Someone in the angry crowd had maced his 22-year-old granddaughter.
Aldrete, a 62-year-old disabled Vietnam vet, said he grabbed a handgun and fired two warning shots into the ground.
"Leave my grandchildren alone!" Alderete shouted. Then he called 911 and told the dispatcher, "They're firing at us, I need to protect myself."
Alderete feared what would happen to his adult daughter, who is severely mentally retarded, if the gang members got inside.
"My daughter is helpless without me," said Alderete, who's been her sole caretaker since his wife died three years ago.
"They got to take me out, before they get to her," he said.
As the grandfather returned to his front door, he said four men were rushing across the porch -- one of them had his foot inside the screen door.
The decision to shoot the intruder flashed through his mind, Alderete said. "It's not what I'm going to do, it's what I have to do. That's what I told myself," Alderete recounted to TheDenverChannel.com.
Alderete fired the gun and suddenly 36-year-old Jesus Sifuentes Jr. lay dying on the porch.
The nightmare was far from over.
Denver police officers responding to the shooting said they were confronted outside the house by Alderete's 25-year-old grandson, Daniel Alderete, holding a gun.
Police said an officer shot young Alderete when he ignored orders to drop the gun and raised it toward the officer. Family members dispute that account.
As officers arrested Filberto Alderete in connection with the deadly shooting, he said he desperately tried to explain that his 35-year-old daughter had the mental capacity of a child, that there was no one in the house to care for her.
"They just grabbed me and threw me in handcuffs and threw me in the patrol car," said Filberto Alderete, who later learned from a public defender that his disabled daughter was staying with family members.
After spending two nights in jail booked on investigation of first-degree murder, the grandfather was released Monday.
Prosecutors decided the shooting was justified under Colorado self-defense and "Make My Day" laws, said Denver district attorney spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough.
The "Make My Day" law states that a home occupant is "justified in using any degree of physical force" against an unlawful intruder if he reasonably believes the person "might use any physical force, no matter how slight, against any occupant."
"Mr. Sifuentes was in the process of unlawfully gaining entry into the home when he was shot and killed by the homeowner," Kimbrough said.
Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said officers acted properly in arresting Filberto Alderete while they investigated the fatal shooting.
"If somebody shoots somebody we can't just say, 'OK, go ahead.' That's not our decision to make," Jackson said.
"Our job is to make an arrest and present the facts to the district attorney and their job is determine whether it warrants charges or not," he said. "That’s the way the justice system is supposed to work."
The grandfather said police and his attorney have advised him to not discuss details of the shooting, especially with his grandson potentially facing charges in the police shooting.
The younger Alderete is recovering from a gunshot to his abdomen and has been moved to jail on investigation of assaulting a peace officer, according to police and family members.
Filberto Alderete said he is still reeling from taking the life of a man, who he said he'd never met.
"It's just very upsetting and traumatizing," the grandfather said.
"It was something that was done that could have been avoided," if the men had not tried to force their way into his home, Filberto Alderete added. "It's just something that happened. You can't take it back."
The grandfather said the shooting was the culmination of a year of harassment against him and his family by neighborhood gang members and "wannabes."
It began after he called the police during a summer party at his home last year when gang members started a fight with family members and friends in his yard.
After that, the grandfather said, "They would say they're were going to get us back."
Now,Alderete said, police have warned him they've intercepted e-mails threatening retaliation for Sifuentes' death.
When he was released from jail, the grandfather said officers escorted him to an undisclosed residence for his own safety.
Now,Alderete said, he and his daughter must find a new home, away from the neighborhood where he lived for 15 years, where nearly everyone called him "grandpa."
Topic: Grandfather: Had To Kill To Protect Disabled Daughter (Read 690 times)