A 20-year-old Denver man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for shooting and killing 17-year-old Nathan Poindexter Jr. two years ago in an Aurora mall.
Kamyl Garrette pleaded guilty in October to one count of second-degree murder with a violent crime sentence enhancer, while other counts were dismissed as part of the plea agreement, the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said in a news release Monday.
A second man, 20-year-old Senoj Jones of Denver, pleaded guilty in May to second-degree murder, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison following successful completion of a seven-year sentence in the Youth Offender system.
On Dec. 27, 2019, Poindexter was at the Aurora’s Town Center mall with his family when he encountered Garrette and Jones, with whom the teen had had an ongoing dispute, prosecutors said.
The three got into a fight inside the mall, before Garrette pulled out a gun and shot Poindexter in front of his stepfather and younger brother, prosecutors said. The 17-year-old was unarmed.
“Mr. Garrette made the final choice to pull the weapon and to fire the weapon with deadly accuracy,” Arapahoe District Court Judge Shay Whitaker said during the Dec. 17 sentencing hearing, according to the district attorney’s office. “At some point, pulling a gun and pulling the trigger has got to stop being the answer.”
Poindexter’s mother told the court that her “baby is gone and I am hurting,” the DA’s office said.
Before his death, the teen was active in the Crowley Foundation, a local nonprofit aiming to build strong social and intellectual skills with boys throughout the metro area.
“He’s a little guy as far as his frame, but his smile and his charisma was way bigger than his physical stature,” Kenneth Crowley, the foundation’s executive director, told The Denver Post after the shooting. “When you see him, you couldn’t help but fall in love with him. He just exuded this friendly aura.”
Poindexter was a natural leader who embodied the ethos of family and service, Crowley said at the time.
