Colorado prison officials will not allow a man convicted of killing a Denver police officer 20 years ago to enter a program that could make him eligible to seek an early release, a prison spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.
Raul Gomez-Garcia, 39, drew outrage last month when he applied to participate in a three-year prison program for people convicted of crimes as juveniles and young adults. If he were accepted to and completed the program, which focuses on building life skills, he would have been eligible to apply for early parole.
Gomez-Garcia was convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of Denver police Detective Donald Young on May 8, 2005. Gomez-Garcia was 19 at the time.
His request to join the program was denied on April 4, Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alondra Gonzalez said, because it did not meet “the statutory and policy-based eligibility requirements.”
“Mr. Gomez-Garcia is not under consideration for the program and is not eligible to reapply for a period of three years,” she said in a statement.
Over the last seven years, roughly 59% of prisoners who applied for the program were denied, prison records show. Between the 2021 and 2023 fiscal years, 17 prisoners were granted parole after finishing the program.
In a statement to The Denver Post about the controversy around his application to the program, Gomez-Garcia said he hoped the program would help him learn “even more tools that I can use to continue to improve and become a better man today than I was yesterday.”
He also apologized for his actions and said he is no longer the same person he was as a teenager.
Gomez-Garcia shot Young and his partner, Detective Jack Bishop, who survived, while the pair of officers were working an off-duty security job on May 8, 2005. Gomez-Garcia, who was living in the U.S. illegally, fled to Mexico after the killing and was extradited to Denver.
The possibility that he could have become eligible for an early release outraged Young’s family, the Denver police union, and Denver police Chief Ron Thomas, who called it “preposterous.”
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