Former deputy allegedly shoots and damages police cars, fires rifle at Boulder sheriff’s headquarters
By Jesse Sarles, Ashley Portillo
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BOULDER, Colorado (KCNC) — Deputies from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office arrested a former member of their department on Monday after he allegedly made a distress call to emergency dispatch overnight. Tyler Reilly is charged with shooting at multiple police cars outside the Broomfield police building and also firing a rifle at the Boulder sheriff’s headquarters, where he was taken into custody.
No injuries were reported at either of the affected law enforcement locations in the northwestern part of the Denver metro area, but after he was taken to the Boulder County Jail, Reilly allegedly attacked and injured an officer.
Reilly, 40, worked for both the jail division and the patrol division of the sheriff’s office in the county and left the department in May 2024. The sheriff’s office said he resigned “in lieu of termination for cause” but did not provide the reason why.
“Had he not resigned, I would have terminated him,” said Sheriff Curtis Johnson in a news conference.
Reilly now faces numerous charges including prohibited use of weapons, menacing, obstructing governmental operations, criminal trespass, reckless endangerment and assault.
The sheriff’s office said Reilly made threats over the phone early Monday morning against sheriff’s office facilities. They said they believe he called their emergency dispatch saying he was experiencing anxiety. The department then prepared for the possibility that he might be coming to one of the county’s law enforcement facilities.
He allegedly went to the Broomfield Police Department first and fired bullets at parked police cruisers outside. After daybreak on Monday, some of those vehicles at the department, which is located at 7 Descombes Drive, could be seen with shattered windows and flat tires. Broomfield is outside of Boulder County and has its own police force.
Police in Broomfield said they are reviewing surveillance video to see if Reilly somehow got inside the department’s gated area to get closer to their police cars or shot at them from outside that area. They said about a half a dozen vehicles were damaged.
The sheriff’s office says Reilly then traveled to the headquarters of the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office at 5600 Flatiron Parkway in Boulder. A news release from the department says he had an AR‑15-style rifle and fired multiple shots at the front of the building just after 1 a.m. Deputies then confronted him and arrested him before he was able to enter the facility.
No member of either law enforcement agency fired any weapons during the events.
Johnson described the situation as “frightening, disheartening” for his office.
“This could have ended up being an officer-involved shooting, where people who knew this individual had to take his life because he was using a high-powered rifle in front of our facility, shooting into a building that is always occupied 24/7, and I think some tactics and some communication, and having a tactical advantage on him, put him at a disadvantage in a way that we could get him to put the gun down and surrender to the deputies that were on scene,” said Johnson.
The lobby of the sheriff’s office building was closed on Monday morning while an investigation into the shootings was taking place. It reopened in the afternoon.
Broomfield Police Chief Enea Hempelmann released a statement that said in part, “The safety of our personnel and the community remains our highest priority. We will continue to work closely with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office as the investigation progresses.”
The sheriff’s office said Reilly started working for the sheriff’s office in 2012 in what was his first law enforcement position. He worked mostly in the jail up until 2023, at which point he changed roles and became a patrol deputy. The next year he resigned, and has not been employed by the office since then.
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