{"id":32405,"date":"2023-08-10T17:38:46","date_gmt":"2023-08-10T23:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-gunshot-victim-says-shooter-was-a-vigilante\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:57:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:57:31","slug":"durango-gunshot-victim-says-shooter-was-a-vigilante","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-gunshot-victim-says-shooter-was-a-vigilante\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango gunshot victim says shooter was a \u2018vigilante\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Mitchell\"
Mitchell<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A Durango man who was shot multiple times early Wednesday recalled the events of the incident that left him hospitalized.<\/p>\n

Thomas Jeffrey Mitchell, who is recovering in a Colorado Springs hospital, said he was sleeping when a \u201cvigilante\u201d entered his apartment, climbed the stairs and tried to kill him. He spoke with The Durango Herald<\/em> about 18 hours after the shooting. He sounded fearful, but in good spirits.<\/p>\n

When reached on his cellphone Wednesday night, Mitchell said he was doing \u201cgood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus has got my back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said he was shot in the hand and the back. He called the injuries \u201ctypical gunshot wounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitchell kept referring to the shooter as a \u201cvigilante,\u201d but didn\u2019t explain further.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was trying to kill me,\u201d he said. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t trying to rob me. He left my wallet and left all this (expletive) and he was trying to kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He indicated he had seen the suspect before, but he couldn\u2019t place where he had seen him before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll figure it out when I get better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mitchell said he did the best he could to defend himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried kicking him down the stairs, just hold up my hands. I blacked out, I couldn\u2019t see him. He used all his rounds, then he took off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At the Durango Police Department\u2019s request, The Durango Herald<\/em> withheld publication of this story Wednesday night until an arrest could be made.<\/p>\n

Durango police said the shooting occurred shortly after 12:45 a.m. Wednesday at the Red Cliff Apartments, 5800 Main Ave., in north Durango.<\/p>\n

A so-called \u201cperson of interest\u201d fled the scene and remained at large until about 9 p.m. Wednesday when police made an arrest in the 2800 block of East Animas Road (County Road 250), a short distance east of the apartment complex.<\/p>\n

According to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Mitchell is a registered sex offender living at the apartment. He has an out-of-state conviction in 2006 for child molestation and convictions in 2011 for sexual exploitation of a child involving videos, according to a CBI website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Durango Police Department declined to comment about Mitchell and had not identified the \u201cperson of interest\u201d as of Thursday.<\/p>\n

shane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mitchell recounts events while recovering in hospital <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[168,28,1866],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-32405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81780,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32405\/revisions\/81780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32405"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=32405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}