Police have released surveillance footage of the moment the Denver gunman goes on a shooting spree across tattoo parlors on Monday. Lyndon McLeod, 47, was captured on camera entering Lucky 13 Tattoo on Kipling Street in Lakewood carrying a gun before he shot down one of his victims.
The chilling footage was captured from the surveillance camera of a nearby liquor store, which was later released by police. McLeod shot dead five people at multiple locations across Denver on Monday night before he was gunned down by police. All the five victims were reportedly connected to the tattoo industry and McLeod knew them.
Spine Chilling
A 50-second surveillance video from In and Out Liquor, which is adjacent to Lucky Thirteen Tattoo at 1550 Kipling Street in Lakewood, appears to show a gunman pull up to the tattoo shop in a dark-colored van and walk inside carrying a gun. The man, later identified as McLeod, can be seen holding the gun at his side, pointed at the ground.
The chilling video shows McLeod spending barely 10 seconds inside a Lakewood tattoo shop where one person was killed before walking back to his van before leaving. Venika Ladaprasankul, a waitress at a restaurant next to the tattoo shop said that she heard three gunshots as she was sweeping the floor of the restaurant but didn't realize that a shooting was on.
She then stepped outside the restaurant and saw the gunman casually walking with a gun in his hand and entering a black van and driving away. "I understand now when people say you can't move," she said, adding that she froze after hearing gunshots. "We heard a bang, bang bang—so loud."
She said that after she entered the shop she saw a man, later identified as Danny "Dano Blair" Scofield, laying down on the ground.
"We couldn't sleep [last night]," she said. "It's kind of running in my mind because it was so close."
Prior to that McLeod had already shot dead two women working in a tattoo parlor. He then shot dead a man in a home and went to the site of his former business in downtown Denver, Flat Black Ink Corp and opened fire. However, but no one was injured.
After killed the fourth man in the Lakewood are tattoo parlor, he drove his van the Hyatt House hotel and killed a clerk, before being shot dead by police.
Mentally Disturbed
Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, Paul Pazen, chief of Denver Police, said that McLeod was investigated in the middle of 2020 and again in early 2021, but did not give specifics. McLeod owned a tattoo parlor, Flat Black Ink Corp, in downtown Denver. However, he shut down his tattoo business in 2017, sold off his home and mysteriously disappeared.
McLeod reportedly McLeod, who lived in a shipping container up a mountain, glorifying in a life free of women and full of "books, guns and meat", after having declared Flat Black Ink bankrupt in 2017.
According o police McLeod, a known extremist with psychiatric problems and violent material on his social media, self-published a series of novels online, under the pseudonym Roman McClay between 2018 and 2020.
Interestingly, one of his books features a character named Lyndon McLeod who opens fire on a tattoo parlor in downtown Denver. McLeod's books had him as the central character. In the story, his character goes on a six-month rampage, shooting dead 46 people who had wronged him throughout his life.
His Instagram and Twitter accounts show he harbored misogynistic hatred, and reveled in alt-right conspiracy theories. Understandably, all the victims were known to McLeod and he shot them down because he felt they have wronged him in life.
McLeod shot a female officer in the abdomen, but she returned fire and killed him. She was wearing body armor and is expected to make a full recovery.
