Adams County jurors will decide whether a Colorado anti-violence advocate left a peace rally, drove to a 5-year-old boy’s birthday party and shot the boy’s father at point-blank range to avenge his son’s death — or whether the man visited the party with good intentions and got caught up in a shooting carried out by someone else.
During opening statements in Lumumba Sayers Sr.’s murder trial Tuesday, prosecutors and defense attorneys presented two very different versions of the Aug. 10, 2024, killing of 28-year-old Malcolm Watson at his son’s pool party in Commerce City’s Pioneer Park.
Sayers Sr., 47, is charged in with first-degree murder, menacing and two counts of tampering with evidence in Watson’s killing.
Prosecutors alleged that Sayers Sr. shot and killed Watson to avenge the death of his son, Lumumba Sayers Jr., who was killed in a shootout in Five Points in 2023, because Sayers Sr. believed Watson was connected to his son’s death.
People close to Sayers Sr. said he’d become obsessed with his son’s killing and frequently spoke about getting revenge on the “East Side,” before the homicide at the birthday party, prosecutor Laura Anderson told jurors.
“He was obsessed over his son’s murder, he wanted revenge, and he thought Malcolm was involved,” she told jurors.
But carrying out a killing would be completely out of character for Sayers Sr., who ran the — an anti-violence organization in Aurora, defense attorney Megan Downing argued.
Sayers Sr. attended an anti-violence rally sponsored by Denver nonprofit immediately before he decided to stop by the Commerce City birthday party, where he’d hoped to see his daughter and grandchildren, she said.
“He walked into something that he did not expect, that he did not plan, and that he did not want,” Downing told jurors. “Mr. Sayers, like everyone, witnessed a horrific tragedy that is the opposite of everything he is.”
The killing unfolded in seconds.
Sayers Sr. pulled into the parking lot of the park at 4:55 p.m., got out of his SUV and walked toward Watson. Within 10 seconds, the young father was shot five times, including once in the head, just above his ear, court testimony revealed.
Sayers Sr. is seen on video backing away from the shooting with a gun in his right hand — but that gun was not the weapon used in the homicide, Downing said. Investigators believe an untraceable 3D-printed or kit-built “ghost gun” was used to fire the fatal shots. That ghost gun was never recovered.
Instead, investigators found only Sayers Sr.’s gun at the crime scene, which he dropped near Watson’s body. The gun was not fired during the incident, Anderson said.
Prosecutors said Sayers Sr. tried to plant the weapon on Watson immediately after the shooting in an attempt to build a self-defense claim. They showed jurors cellphone video taken by a witness in which Sayers is seen kneeling over the victim’s body and rifling through his clothing.
Downing said Sayers drew his weapon after hearing shots. He threw the gun on the ground near Watson’s body after removing the magazine because he didn’t want to be armed when police arrived, she said. He knelt over the body to check the man’s pulse, she said.
He began carrying the gun after his son’s death for self-defense during his anti-gang violence work, Downing told jurors.
She noted that Sayers never claimed that the gun he left at the scene — his gun — belonged to Watson.
Three witnesses who knew Sayers Sr. personally and were close to the shooting identified Sayers Sr. as the shooter. Other witnesses, who were farther away and did not know Sayers Sr., pointed to a different man as the shooter. Prosecutors believe the other man ran from the scene with the murder weapon, but that Sayers Sr. actually fired the fatal shots.
Downing said the other man carried out the killing. She suggested that the three witnesses were mistaken, and that prosecutors and investigators twisted facts to fit their belief that Sayers Sr. fired the fatal shots.
Anderson pointed out that Watson’s 5-year-old son screamed “You killed my daddy!” at Sayers Sr. immediately after the attack. The little boy ran with the man that other witnesses described as the shooter and tried to get into that man’s vehicle after the attack, she said, suggesting that the boy would not have done so if the man had been the killer.
The prosecutor also noted that the other man had been at the party for 10 minutes before the shooting.
“If he was going to kill Malcolm, why would he wait until Mr. Sayers arrives?” she asked.
Anderson alleged Sayers tried to take a cellphone from witnesses immediately after the attack, leading to a scuffle. Downing said Sayers was in shock and tried to get the phone because he believed the witnesses had his own cellphone. She said some of his actions after the shooting can’t be explained.
Prosecutors allege the killing was retaliation for Sayers’ son’s death. Two people who knew Sayers Sr. well said the man grew obsessed about his son’s killing and talked frequently about seeking revenge, even seeming to believe at one point that his slain son might return alive. On the day of the killing, Sayers Sr. wore a shirt with an image of his son on it.
Downing said he wore the shirt — and carried the gun — because he was attending the Struggle of Love peace rally and wanted protection, not because he intended to take revenge for his son’s death that day.
No one was convicted of murder in Sayers Jr.’s death, but the suspected shooter was connected to Watson, according to an arrest affidavit. Downing said Tuesday that Watson had nothing to do with Sayers Jr.’s death.
“When I say this case will raise questions, it will raise more questions than it will answer,” she told jurors. “It will not answer the question of who killed Mr. Watson.”
Sayers Jr., 23, was killed in 2023 in a shootout in Denver’s Five Points that involved at least eight shooters. The exchange of gunfire at 28th and Welton streets on Aug. 19, 2023, killed both Sayers Jr. and 25-year-old Gulian Musiwa. Two women were wounded but survived. Both women witnessed Watson’s killing a year later.
Tyrell Braxton, 26, was arrested on charges of first-degree murder in Musiwa’s killing, but Denver prosecutors dropped the criminal case against him in December 2023 after concluding Braxton may have acted in self-defense. Braxton was indicted a month later on federal charges for illegally possessing ammunition as a felon, was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Braxton, Musiwa and Sayers Jr. had all been hanging out on the street corner with a group of people before Braxton exchanged words with Musiwa and then shot him six times in the chest and back at about 3:48 a.m., court proceedings revealed.
Those shots set off a torrent of violence: People at the street corner fired at least 71 shots from eight different guns, prosecutors said. Braxton was one of four shooters who fired toward Sayers Jr. during the shootout, federal prosecutors wrote in court filings. Sayers Jr. was also armed and fired six shots during the exchange, federal prosecutors said.
No one was ever charged with Sayers Jr.’s homicide.
