Lakewood police on Friday, November 6 identified the officer killed in Thursday's bus shootout as Agent Nic Graham, 33, and named the dead gunman as Gabriel Steven Garcia, 34, a Colorado parolee who had been released from prison in September. Awaaz Punjab reported the shooting itself on Thursday, when four Lakewood agents were shot aboard an RTD bus west of Denver and the department had not yet released any names; Friday's identifications, the suspect's record and the wounded officers' conditions are the major new developments in the case.
Source: Associated Press
Graham, whose full name was Nicholas 'Nick' Alan Graham, joined the Lakewood Police Department in January 2019. He had moved from patrol into the department's major crimes unit and carried 322 cases, the biggest caseload on that team, and he was a decorated field training agent who taught new officers, according to details released by the department and reported by the Associated Press.
He came from a police family: his father recently retired from police work and his mother worked in a crime laboratory. Lakewood Police Chief Philip Smith presented Graham's service record at a Friday news conference as the department, and the city of about 157,000 people just west of Denver, absorbed the first full account of who had been lost.
How the Thursday shooting unfolded
The chain of events began with a hit-and-run crash near Kipling Street and West 13th Avenue shortly before 3:45 p.m. on Thursday, November 5. Garcia allegedly fled that crash, and officers later spotted him boarding a northbound RTD Route 76 bus at West Colfax Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard, one of the busiest intersections in Lakewood, about five miles (eight kilometres) west of downtown Denver.
Source: The Denver Post
Officers boarded the bus at 6:32 p.m. and confronted the suspect, who, police say, turned and opened fire on them. A witness, Teddy O'Brien, estimated that roughly 20 shots were fired. The bus, operated for the Regional Transportation District (RTD) by a contractor, was carrying four passengers at the time; one passenger, a bystander, was wounded in the exchange.
The suspect's record
Garcia was a parolee with a violent history involving law enforcement. In 2017 he was convicted of a felony for assaulting a police officer; according to the Denver Post's reporting of police accounts, he attacked, punched and tried to strangle an Adams County sheriff's deputy that year. Colorado Department of Corrections records reported Friday show he was released on parole again on September 23, 2026 - roughly six weeks before the shooting. Times Now, citing official accounts, reported he was also taken into custody by Broomfield Police on September 28 and held until October 20 before being released again. Garcia died in the bus shootout.
Source: Times Now World
Those dates are likely to focus attention on parole supervision in Colorado: a man convicted of attacking a deputy, released in late September, briefly held again in October, and free in November is now accused of killing a police agent. Every element of that timeline has been reported from police and corrections accounts; Garcia cannot be tried, and the allegations about Thursday's shooting rest on the police account and the ongoing investigation.
The wounded officers and the passenger
By Friday, two of the wounded Lakewood agents had been released from Denver Health, according to hospital spokesperson Deydra Bringas. One agent remained hospitalised and was recovering from his injuries; a spokesperson for CommonSpirit - St. Anthony Hospital, Lindsay Radford, said his injuries were not life-threatening. The wounded passenger was also treated; the identities of the wounded officers and the passenger have not been released.
Because Lakewood officers were shot and a suspect died, the investigation is being handled by the Critical Incident Response Team of the First Judicial District (Jefferson County), the standard outside-agency protocol for police shootings in the county - not by Lakewood police themselves.
Lakewood is unusual among American departments in calling its sworn officers 'agents', a title the department adopted because it is modelled on the FBI. Regular riders on Route 76 reacted with shock on Friday; Nate Weickum, who rides the route often, told Denver7 the shooting had shaken his sense of safety, while Ronald Short of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001 said the bus driver was physically fine after the incident.
What happens next: the Critical Incident Response Team's investigation will establish the full sequence of the shooting, including the hit-and-run that started it, and its findings will be reviewed by the district attorney's office. The department is mourning a major-crimes agent described by colleagues as the team's hardest-working investigator, and the parole timeline - release on September 23, a Broomfield custody spell ending October 20, and a fatal shooting on November 5 - is now a documented part of the public record that state corrections officials will have to answer for.