Nathan Dunlap *1993 Aurora Colorado Shooting* 1 Page Handwritten Letter & Envelope Set

On December 14, 1993, 4 employees were shot and killed, and a 5th employee was seriously injured at a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant in Aurora, Colorado, United States. The perpetrator, 19-year-old Nathan Dunlap, a former employee of the restaurant, was frustrated about being fired 5 months prior to the shooting and sought revenge by committing the attack. He fled the scene of the shooting with stolen money and restaurant items. At the time, the Chuck E. Cheese Massacre was the deadliest mass shooting in Colorado, being surpassed by the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

Dunlap was found guilty of 4 counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and other charges, and was sentenced to death by lethal injection on May 17, 1996.  A judge initially set an execution date for him in August 2013, but Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signed a temporary reprieve that postponed Dunlap's execution date.

Dunlap's death sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole in 2020 after Colorado abolished the death penalty.

Nathan Dunlap entered the restaurant at 9:00 p.m., where he ordered a ham and cheese sandwich and played an arcade game. He then hid in a restroom at about 9:50 p.m. He exited the restroom after closing at 10:05 p.m. and shot 5 employees with a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

Dunlap first shot Sylvia Crowell, 19, who was cleaning the salad bar. She was hit from close range in the right ear and was mortally wounded. Ben Grant, 17, was fatally shot near the left eye as he was vacuuming. Colleen O'Connor, 17, was fatally shot once through the temple. Bobby Stephens, 20, the lone survivor of the shooting, returned to the restaurant after taking a smoke break outside, thinking the noise he heard from inside the restaurant were children popping balloons nearby.

As Stephens walked into the restaurant and unloaded utensils into the dishwasher, Dunlap came through the kitchen door, raised the handgun at him, and fired a shot that struck Stephens in the jaw. Stephens fell to the floor and played dead. Dunlap then forced Marge Kohlberg, 50, the store manager, to unlock the safe. After she opened it, Dunlap shot her in the ear. As he was taking the cash out of the safe, Dunlap fired a second fatal shot through Kohlberg's other ear after he noticed she was still moving.  The manager who fired Dunlap was not present at the restaurant.  Six spent shell casings were found inside the restaurant. 

Stephens escaped through a back door and walked to the nearby Mill Pond apartment complex, where he pounded on a door to alert someone that he and others had been shot at the restaurant. Stephens was hospitalized at Denver General Hospital in fair condition. As authorities arrived on the scene, they found two bodies in the restaurant's hallway, a third in a room off the hallway, and the fourth in the manager's office. Crowell was sent to Denver General Hospital, where she was declared brain dead.  She died from her injuries the next day at Aurora Regional Medical Center. 

Dunlap fled the scene with $1,500 worth of cash and game tokens he stole from inside the restaurant. He was arrested at his mother's apartment twelve hours later.