Centennial – A man charged with murder in the shooting death of a 62-year-old convenience store clerk told police he intended to rob the store, but his shotgun fired accidentally.
John Andrew Doubleday, 23, is charged in the murder of Jutte Gallegos Burton during a robbery.
At Monday’s preliminary hearing, prosecutors played a video of the defendant’s police interview taped shortly after his arrest.
On tape, Doubleday, without an attorney present, told Aurora police detectives that he was drunk and incoherent during the early morning shooting Dec. 10.
After advising Doubleday of his rights, Detective Hershel Stowell asked: “Do you know why you are here?”
“For the murder of a clerk in Aurora,” Doubleday answered.
“Did you do that?” Stowell asks.
“Yes, sir,” Doubleday replies.
Doubleday was calm and polite throughout the hour-long interview taped in the El Paso County Jail on Dec. 21 after his arrest at a Colorado Springs hotel.
Doubleday told Stowell and another detective that he drank a bottle of brandy and six or seven beers the night the robbery went awry.
Walking into a 7-Eleven store near East Sixth Avenue and Havana Street, Doubleday pulled a concealed single-barrel shotgun from the left sleeve of his coat, he told detectives. A 12-gauge shell was falling from the chamber, which had opened, and when Doubleday slipped the shell back in and snapped the chamber shut the gun accidently fired, he said on tape.
Burton was shot once in the back. The shooting was caught on a store security tape. Doubleday fled without any money, police said.
Amie Lewis, 22, Doubleday’s girlfriend, is being held on conspiracy to commit murder. The couple’s 1-year-old son was with the pair when El Paso County sheriff’s deputies apprehended them.
Staff writer Kieran Nicholson can be reached at 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com.
