DENVER—Hundreds of people attended a funeral service and flags flew at half-staff Thursday for a prosecutor who was shot and killed in his own yard.
Denver police say the person who killed Adams County Deputy District Attorney Sean May was probably lying in wait and shot him in the head and abdomen as he was walking home from work Aug. 27.
May, 37, is survived by his wife, Corin, who is pregnant with the couple’s first child.
The funeral was at the Temple Buell Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex.
May lived in Denver but worked for the district attorney in neighboring Adams County for seven years, serving in the Child Victim Unit before his recent promotion to chief deputy for county court.
No arrests have been made. Police have offered a reward for information leading to a suspect.
May’s colleagues this week told the Rocky Mountain News that May had a quirky sense of humor and a knack for helping others. He once stayed in a basketball game after coming up with a noticeable limp, and two weeks later learned he had broken his leg.
After earning his undergraduate degree from Stanford, May earned his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School. He landed a job at a private law firm but eventually gave up a six-figure salary to work as a prosecutor, where the starting pay is about $45,000 a year.
“I always had the sense that he might want to go into public service, so I wasn’t terribly surprised by that,” said Jim Linfield, managing partner of the Colorado office of what is now Cooley Godward Kronish, the private firm where May worked.
May was briefly in the limelight as one of the prosecutors in ABC News’ 2004 “In the Jury Room,” where the network won permission to film while defense attorneys plotted strategy, prosecutors worked on their arguments, and the jury deliberated. The Colorado Supreme Court approved the arrangement.
During one segment, May was practicing his opening statement in the living room while his dog lay on the floor, watching him.
At one point, May stopped, stared at his notes and turned to his dog. “Hey, Mulder,” he said. “You wanna try this again?”
Defense attorney Douglas Romero told the News that May had called him minutes before he was killed and told him about threats he received from a relative of an 11-old-girl who was the victim of a peeping tom in a store changing room.
Romero had represented the defendant, winning a reduced conviction of harassment, which carried a fine but no jail time. May called Romero concerned that the defense attorney could be in danger, too.
The News said May made the call at 5:44 p.m. on Aug. 27. May was gunned down at 6:20 p.m.
Police spokesman Sonny Jackson on Thursday would not comment on the phone call or whether it was part of the investigation. He also declined to say whether investigators believe May’s death was random or connected to his work as a prosecutor.
“We’re looking at the totality of the case,” Jackson said. “We’re not going to hone in on part it.”
