Incident: Monday, August 10, 2026, about 2:50 p.m., Longmont, Colorado.
THE CALL
A domestic-related disturbance that was a hostage situation. Dariss Yearby, 20, was holding an 18-year-old woman.
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What officers did not know at the time, and what came out after: he was already awaiting trial for allegedly strangling that same woman, out on a $20,000 bond.
WHAT HAPPENED
Officers set up on the house and announced themselves at the door, over and over. Come to the front door with your hands open and empty. If you do not, we are coming in to get you. Then they went in.
Officers confronted Yearby inside. His right hand was hidden inside a brown handbag and he told them, more than once and clearly on the body camera, that he had a gun.
The woman he was holding told officers that he did not.
One officer fired. Yearby was transported and died at the hospital.
The 18-year-old was not injured. No officers were injured. No firearm was recovered. One officer fired; no agency has published a round count.
THE BREAKDOWN
That officer did the right thing and he did it with one shot.
Understand the position. A man is holding a hostage directly in front of him. The man’s hand is inside a bag where nobody can see it, and the man is telling police he has a gun. The hostage is telling them he does not — she is trying to save him.
You cannot wait to see it. That is the whole thing. When a man says he is armed and his hand is where you cannot see it and there is a person in front of him, you do not get to wait for the gun to come out and prove him right. He took a scary shot and he took the correct one.
One more thing worth noticing. The officer who fired was not one of the first ones there. He rolled up later, walked into it, and got it done. The officers who were already inside had the chance to end it from the beginning and did not. I am not criticizing them for that — I am not a fan of shooting somebody just because you legally can, and in twenty years I was in plenty of situations where I would have been justified and did not. Maybe the officer who fired was simply more confident in his shot.
Either way it is a good shooting and it would be cleared anywhere.
And credit where it is due, on something most people will scroll past: there is a big dog in that house and it is being perfectly friendly, and nobody shoots it. I have been seeing too much of the other lately. Good for them.
WHERE IT STANDS
He is dead, so there is no case against him — and the case he was already facing dies with him. He had been charged with attempted murder in the second degree, two counts of assault by strangulation, false imprisonment of a minor and misdemeanor assault, all as domestic violence, with trial set for December 14, 2026. The victim in that case was the same woman he took hostage.
The shooting has not been ruled on. The Boulder Critical Incident Team has the investigation — it is a multi-agency team and Longmont police do not participate in it — and the Boulder County District Attorney makes the decision. No charging decision has been announced.
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