Colorado Springs Officer Fires After Man Points BB Gun at Him

It began with a late-night call about a possible burglary and a man who had reportedly threatened to return with a gun. Just minutes later, a Colorado Springs police officer found himself standing only feet away from several people when one of them suddenly raised what appeared to be a rifle toward him. THE NEXT FEW SECONDS WOULD CHANGE EVERYTHING.

The incident happened on November 13, 2025, in the 500 block of South Nevada Avenue in Colorado Springs. According to the Colorado Springs Police Department, officers were called shortly after 11:30 p.m. after a reporting party said a man had previously assaulted someone, left the area, and threatened to come back with a gun. When the man allegedly returned and began banging on the door, police were contacted.

At approximately 11:41 p.m., Officer Austin Hornburger arrived at the location. His immediate objective was straightforward: contact the person who had called 911 and determine what was happening. At that point, there was no obvious disturbance outside. Nothing about the scene suggested that the next few seconds would become an officer-involved shooting.

Hornburger moved toward the reporting party's room. The officer was walking through the property when the reporting party emerged from behind a locked security door. Then, almost immediately, three other people stepped into the walkway between the officer and the caller.

Two were males.

One was female.

And one of the males was carrying what appeared to be a rifle.

THEN THE WEAPON CAME UP.

According to the department's briefing and released footage, the man raised the rifle directly toward the officer. Hornburger reacted by firing four rounds. The bullets struck two people who were standing close to the man holding the rifle.

The entire sequence happened in only seconds.

That timing is critical because what the officer appeared to be facing in that instant was not a harmless object. It looked like a real rifle. There was no opportunity to calmly inspect it, check the markings, or determine whether it was capable of firing lethal ammunition.

THE OFFICER HAD TO REACT TO WHAT HE COULD SEE.

The officer's response immediately changed the scene. Two people near the man with the rifle had been struck, and Hornburger moved downstairs to find cover. The gunfire was over, but the situation was far from resolved.

Then came another unexpected moment.

Approximately one minute later, the man who had raised the rifle appeared again on the second-floor walkway. This time, he was no longer holding the weapon. He told the officer that two people had been shot and needed help.

The man was taken into custody without further incident.

Other officers who had arrived began providing medical assistance to the two wounded people. Both were transported to a local hospital with injuries described by police as non-life-threatening.

And then investigators discovered something that completely changed how the weapon itself would be understood.

THE RIFLE WAS NOT A FIREARM.

It was a Crosman AK1 full-auto air-cartridge BB gun.

From a distance, however, that distinction was not necessarily obvious in the moment the weapon was raised. The footage and police briefing showed an object designed in the form of an AK-style rifle. Investigators also recovered two other edged weapons at the scene, which police said were consistent with an object the man who was shot had been seen carrying.

This is where the incident becomes especially complicated.

A BB gun may not fire conventional ammunition, but an officer confronted with a rifle being pointed in his direction cannot necessarily know that from appearance alone. The question in those few seconds is not what investigators discover afterward. The question is what the officer reasonably perceived at the instant the weapon was raised.

AND THAT MOMENT LASTED ONLY SECONDS.

Imagine approaching a location late at night because someone has reported a possible armed threat. You know a person may have threatened to return with a gun. You move toward the caller. Suddenly, multiple people enter the walkway, and one of them raises what appears to be a rifle.

There is no time to conduct an investigation.

No time to ask whether it is loaded.

No time to determine whether it is real.

The officer has to make a decision based on the information immediately available.

Hornburger fired four times.

Two people standing near the man with the rifle were hit.

The person holding the BB gun survived the encounter without being shot and was taken into custody. Police later questioned him and released him pending further investigation. As of the department's December 3 briefing, he had not been charged with a crime and was not publicly identified.

THAT DETAIL IS IMPORTANT.

The dramatic footage may make the incident appear straightforward, but the legal outcome was not automatically determined by what happened on camera. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office was assigned the use-of-force investigation, with the case expected to be reviewed by the Fourth Judicial District Attorney's Office to determine whether the officer's use of force was lawful under Colorado law.

So what does the footage actually show?

It shows an officer responding to a reported threat.

It shows several people entering the walkway.

It shows one man raising a rifle-shaped object.

It shows the officer firing.

It shows two nearby people being struck.

And it shows the man who raised the weapon later returning without it and asking for help.

But footage does not always answer every legal question.

THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT WAS ALSO THE SHORTEST.

For the officer, the rifle appeared to be a weapon capable of causing deadly harm. For investigators afterward, the discovery that it was a BB gun created an entirely different set of questions. Those two realities can exist at the same time: the object can be a BB gun, while the person confronted by it may not have known that when it was pointed at him.

That distinction is central to understanding officer-involved shootings involving replica weapons, BB guns, air rifles, or other objects that can resemble firearms.

A person holding such an object may know exactly what it is.

An approaching officer may not.

And the person who decides to point it at an officer may have only seconds to realize how that action could be interpreted.

THAT IS WHAT MADE THIS INCIDENT SO DANGEROUS.

The original call was already serious. Police had been told that a person might be armed and had allegedly threatened to return. The officer arrived expecting to investigate a potential burglary or disturbance. Instead, he encountered an object that appeared to be a rifle being raised in his direction.

Once the weapon came up, the entire situation accelerated.

Four shots.

Two people wounded.

One officer retreating to cover.

Then a man appearing again and telling police that people had been shot.

It was a sequence that could have ended very differently.

The two people who were struck survived with non-life-threatening injuries, according to police. The officer was not reported injured. The man who raised the BB gun was detained and later released while the investigation continued.

And perhaps the most striking part is how quickly everything changed.

Before the rifle was raised, this was a police response.

After it was raised, it became a shooting.

After investigators recovered the weapon, it became a question about perception, identification, and use of force.

THE SAME OBJECT LOOKED VERY DIFFERENT DEPENDING ON WHEN YOU SAW IT.

At the beginning of the encounter, it appeared to be a rifle.

Immediately after the shooting, investigators knew it was a BB gun.

But for the officer standing in that walkway, those two descriptions could not simply be separated by hindsight.

That is why the investigation mattered.

A bodycam video can show what happened, but determining whether an officer's actions were lawful requires examining the circumstances surrounding the event, the information available to the officer, witness accounts, physical evidence, and applicable law.

The case therefore did not end when the gunfire stopped.

In many officer-involved shootings, the loudest moment is only the beginning of the investigation.

The weapons must be recovered.

The footage must be reviewed.

Witnesses must be interviewed.

The sequence of events must be reconstructed.

And prosecutors must determine whether the officer's use of force complied with the law.

EVERY SECOND HAS TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR.

In this Colorado Springs incident, those seconds were especially important because the apparent rifle was ultimately identified as a BB gun, while two people standing nearby were injured by the officer's gunfire.

The footage leaves viewers with an unsettling question: how different might the outcome have been if the object had been immediately recognizable as a BB gun?

There is no way to know.

What can be known is what happened next.

The officer fired.

Two people were wounded.

The man with the rifle was taken into custody.

The BB gun was recovered.

And the investigation continued.

What started as a late-night call about a possible armed threat ended with a police shooting that injured two bystanders and raised difficult questions about how officers respond when a weapon looks real in the moment.

THE DECISION WAS MADE IN SECONDS, BUT THE CONSEQUENCES LASTED MUCH LONGER.

For the people who were wounded, the incident became a medical emergency.

For the officer, it became an officer-involved shooting investigation.

For investigators, it became a question of evidence and law.

And for the public watching the bodycam footage, it became another reminder that an object that looks like a firearm can create a potentially deadly situation even when it is not capable of firing conventional ammunition.

The man who raised the BB rifle was not charged as of the police briefing, and the use-of-force investigation was still subject to review.

So the footage should not be treated as the complete legal story.

It is a record of one critical moment.

A moment when an officer saw a rifle.

A moment when the rifle was raised.

A moment when four shots were fired.

And a moment that left two people injured before investigators discovered that the weapon was actually a BB gun.

Sometimes the most important detail in a police video is not what happens after the shots.

It is what the officer could see BEFORE THE SHOTS.

Because when everything unfolds in a matter of seconds, hindsight has the luxury that the person standing in the walkway never had.

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