ARVADA, Colo. (KDVR) – Investigators found a full-page, handwritten note with the title “Sociopath Sovereign Citizens” taped on a bedroom wall belonging to the shooter who killed an Arvada police officer in June.
In hundreds of documents released by the First Judicial District Attorney’s office, a police report shows investigators discovered the note in Ronald Troyke’s bedroom after the shooting.
The message “indicated a planned attack on law enforcement officers and provided a motive of law enforcement officers acting without integrity and not being held accountable,” police documents revealed.
What was on the shooter’s electronic devices
Detectives said they also found several videos of Troyke “manipulating/walking around with” handguns and a rifle on Troyke’s Samsung tablet.
He also had “an extensive YouTube history which consisted of almost exclusively of anti-police/police misconduct/1st amendment auditor videos.”
An investigator reported that Troyke appeared to have watched those types of videos for hours every day.
The last video on the device had been loaded hours before the deadly shooting in which Troyke shot and killed Arvada Police Officer Gordon Beesley.
According to the police report, the video was titled, “Springfield Police Female Officer Runs Over & kills Black Man After He was Shot – Earning the Hate.”
Troyke’s internet search history also showed the last search on his device questioned whether someone could be criminally charged for cussing at or flipping off a police officer.
Shooter’s siblings asked for welfare check
“My sister said that he’s been watching all this YouTube stuff and all this constant negativity about the police and the negative things that they do and this and that,” Troyke’s brother told investigators during an interview after the deadly shooting. “He’s, he gets up…early in the morning and, uh, calls my sister up and tells, tells her about all this, uh, this, uh negative police stuff that YouTube always shows and all the lies and crap they give out, and he just, I don’t know, he just kept watching it and watching it and just, so I think this is part of it.”
The brother told authorities that Troyke was a high school dropout who had a good childhood. He said his brother enjoyed camping, shooting and riding ATVs, and at one point, he had a job delivering mail.
He said Troyke eventually became kind of a loner after his father died, and he hadn’t spoken to his brother in years.
However, a strange call from Troyke to their sister prior to the shooting prompted the family to request that authorities do a welfare check on him.
“She called me up, and she was cryin’. She goes, ‘Ronnie didn’t seem right at all. Not right at all. He was cryin’ saying, ‘I’m sorry,’” the brother told police.
Police said the family reported that Troyke had made suicidal statements over the phone along the lines of “I can’t do this anymore, take care of yourself, and I’m sorry.”
This prompted officers to be dispatched to an address affiliated with Troyke on the day of the shooting.
However, when they arrived to do the welfare check, less than an hour before the shooting, they learned the address belonged to a business where Troyke had a post-office box.
“A short time later, at 1317 hours, Jeffcomm Dispatch received a call of a ‘suspicious person’ near the Arvada Library…The reporting party advised they were approached by a male who made a ‘weird noise and showed them a condom.’ The male was described as a white male in his 40’s to early 50’s. The reporting party advised they observed the male to continue walking in circles near the ‘fountains’ in Olde Town Arvada,” the report said.
Less than an hour later, dispatchers received reports of gunfire “associated with the suspicious person incident.”
The responding officer had ‘no option’
The shooting ended with Troyke killing Beesley and responding officers mistakenly killing Johnny Hurley, a good Samaritan who shot and killed Troyke.
During the investigation, that officer told investigators, “I had no option but to fire at this man.”
He said he considered shouting commands to Hurley but worried that Hurley – who, unbeknownst to him at the time, was a good Samaritan – would shoot at him with the rifle he was holding, and the officer didn’t think he would “stand a chance.”
“I was certain he was going to be going back to kill people or that he was going to kill me,” he said.
