DENVER (KDVR) — Of the four people arrested during a Friday incident at the Maven Hotel in Lower Downtown, two of them agreed to talk to media outlets on Monday, saying they wanted to share their side of the story.
Gabriel Rodriguez and Ricardo Rodriguez said they wanted to set the record straight about their involvement in the incident, when police had guests on two floors of the hotel take shelter while they took the four people into custody.
Gabriel Rodriguez
“I thought I was just in here for meth, for the dope I got caught with,” Gabriel Rodriguez told FOX31 and Channel 2 from jail on Monday.
Gabriel said he received a call from his fiancé Monday morning while at the Denver County Jail. She told him of a local news report report that said Friday’s arrest at the hotel was stopping a “Las Vegas-style mass shooting.”
“I understand I had a backpack with a lot of dope in it and a pistol, and I will take responsibility for that, but I am not going to take responsibility for something else I didn’t even know was going on,” Gabriel said.
Gabriel has a history criminal drug charges from the past. He said he was only at the hotel to sell methamphetamine to another one of the suspects, Richard Platt. Gabriel also said Platt was the one who had rented out both of the hotel rooms.
“I think he was selling guns, that’s all,” Gabriel said.
Ricard Rodriguez
Ricardo Rodriguez, another one of the suspects, said he took no part in the guns or drugs found in the hotel room. He claimed to FOX31 and Channel 2 that Platt threw him under the bus.
“I don’t know what his intentions were. I don’t know why he had so many guns in his rooms, but from previous conversations, he seemed to be set up in the lifestyle he was living,” Ricardo said.
Ricardo said he would have stopped Platt if he believed anything bad was going to happen.
“I would have been in part of deescalating or stopping something like that. I don’t believe in hurting innocent people. That wouldn’t have gotten past me. There is no way that would have gotten past me,” Ricardo said.
Denver Police and other authorities are investigating the intent behind all the weapons and drugs.